Waspi campaigners urge vote in Parliament on compensation
Campaigners are calling for a vote in Parliament on compensating Waspi women, after those affected by the way changes to the state pension age were communicated were told for the second time that they will not receive payments.
A new letter campaign led by Waspi (Women Against State Pension Inequality) is pressing the Government to enable all MPs to “have their say”.
Campaigners are urging people to contact their MP.
Last week, Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden said: “The evidence shows that the vast majority of 1950s-born women already knew the state pension age was increasing thanks to a wide range of public information, including through leaflets, education campaigns, information in GP surgeries, on TV, radio, cinema and online.”
He said a wider flat-rate scheme “would simply not be right or fair”, and to specifically compensate only those women who suffered injustice “would require a scheme that could reliably verify the individual circumstances of millions of women”.
A previous government decision not to offer redress was reviewed after the rediscovery of a 2007 Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) evaluation, which at the time led to officials stopping sending out automatic pension forecast letters.
Angela Madden, chairwoman of Waspi, said: “There must be a binding vote on compensation in Government time so all our elected representatives can have their say.”
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All women are WASPI women. When I started working I signed up for a retirement age of 60. Over the years this has been moved out to 67. No direct communication about these changes at all, just general media coverage. I now have to wait until I’m 67 for my pension, breach of contract as far as I’m concerned. It’s amazing how the only aspect of female pay and pension inequality directly addressed by governments has been postponing pension payments which only benefitted government. Funny that.
And for men who started work when their retirement age was 65.
What will get interesting is how the clarified biological definition of sex discrimination will apply to state pensions in the future given women live longer for biological reasons. It might be necessary to start pensions later or have a reduced rate for women to account for them receiving it longer.
Meanwhile the men that didn’t get it at 60 might be able to claim back pay between 2010 and 2018 when the ages were equalised.
Well if men can claim back pay from 2010 to 2018, then women should be able to claim for the years after changes were made also. I wasn’t aware that was the case.
The point relates to the 2010 Equality Act which was recently clarified to only apply to biological sex. How have biological women been discriminated against by claiming state pensions earlier than men? If anything those paid state pensions before men since 2010 might need to repay it because it discriminated against biological men who couldn’t claim it. The original justification for allowing women to claim pensions earlier was based on gender which the High Court has since clarified hasn’t been permissable since 2010.