As we have been reporting, SNP Westminster Leader Stephen Flynn has called for a Commons vote on Labour’s decision not to compensate women in the Waspi pension case.

Flynn has now also written to Tory and Lib Dem leaders Kemi Badenoch and Ed Davey, pressing them to use their Opposition Day allocations - days in which the opposition parties choose the subjects debated in the House of Commons - to force a vote.

Flynn adds: "Waspi women have been betrayed by the Labour Party, but the fight doesn't end here - Sir Keir Starmer must follow the compensation recommendation of the independent Ombudsman and the SNP will try to force a vote to make that happen."

Flynn goes on to call it a “complete disgrace” that Labour politicians posed with Waspi campaigners before the election to then not support them once in government.

“It's the very worst of politics,” he adds.

Kevin Peachey
Cost of living correspondent

There’s been plenty of talk of betrayal and political leopards changing their spots.

But - in some ways - there has been a consistency of response from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) on this.

The ombudsman predicted it in March, by saying it didn’t anticipate the government to implement its recommendations.

As a result it laid the report before Parliament, rather than working solely with the DWP.

Obviously there has been a change of government since then, and plenty of talk about whether Labour ministers said one thing in opposition and now another in power.

£1,000 to £2,950: The range of compensation the Parliamentary ombudsman recommended should be paid to each of the women affected when it published its report in March.

£10,000: How much the Waspi called for in compensation for each woman affected.

3.6 million: That's how many women the Waspi campaign group says were born in the 1950s who were not sufficiently informed of the rising pension age from 60 to 65. The ombudsman report in March quoted a Work and Pensions Committee Report from 2016 as saying that 1.1 million women were affected by the equalisation of the state pension age under the 1995 Act alone, and added that "a further 2.7 million women have had their state pension age increased by both the 1995 and 2011 Acts".

£10.5 billion: How much the government says a compensation scheme for the Waspi women could cost.

Do you want to hear how people across the country feel about the government's decision not to pay compensation in the Waspi pension case?

Then tune in to BBC Radio 5 Live by clicking watch live at the top of this page, where Nicky Campbell is taking calls until 11:00 GMT - you can also call 08085 909693 to share your views.

Image source, PA Media

Scottish National Party (SNP) Westminster Leader Stephen Flynn has called for a Commons vote over Labour's decision not to compensate women hit by changes to the state pension age.

"There must be a Commons vote on Labour’s decision to betray the Waspi campaigners," Flynn posted on X.

The Waspi campaign has been highlighting comments made by Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall, the prime minister and other Labour figures before they came to power in July in which they supported their cause.

Flynn, the MP for Aberdeen South, adds: "All those Labour MPs who once pretended to back Waspi must now be faced with the voting lobbies."

We're hearing more now from women impacted by the changing pension age.

Sheila Burgess from Magor in Monmouthshire tells BBC Radio Wales Breakfast: "I feel anger, disgust and complete frustration that so many people in leading roles can lie like they did.

"They gave their support to the Waspi women understanding that we did not get the time scales and notifications at the time.

"Why would they pay out for an ombudsman report if they are not going to listen to it?"

Vera Vaughan-Williams from Senghenydd, near Caerphilly, adds: "I do not accept this decision.

"The government stole six years of our pension pot to save money. We've paid already and now they are going back on what they said."

As a reminder: Campaigners say that 3.6 million women born in the 1950s were not properly informed of the rise in state pension age to bring them into line with men. The government has rejected compensation for women hit by the changes.

When the ombudsman's report was released in March, it said the government had “clearly indicated that it will refuse to comply” with its call for compensation.

"What DWP (The Department for Work and Pensions) has told us during this investigation leads us to strongly doubt it will provide a remedy," it said then of the former Conservative government's intention to pay compensation.

The ombudsman said it was taking the "rare but necessary step" of asking Parliament to intervene, given the scale of the impact of the DWP's "maladministration".

The DWP listed reasons as to why it could not remedy the situation, including "the costs involved, the time it would take, the amount of resource it would involve, and the negative impact delivering a remedy would have on it being able to maintain other services", the report said.

Mel Stride, who was work and pensions secretary at the time, said the government would engage "fully and constructively" on the issue, but did not officially respond to the ombudsman's findings before the election in July.

Chair of the Waspi campaign group, Angela Madden, says many MPs are "as incredulous as we are" that compensation will not be paid.

"Parliament needs to have its say," she tells BBC Breakfast, claiming there is still a lot of support among MPs for their campaign.

She acknowledges the bill for compensation would be a "huge amount of money" – the government has estimated it at £10.5bn – but she insists "this is a question of fairness".

"The government got this wrong," she says.

Shadow business secretary Andrew Griffith says Labour has "betrayed" the Waspi women - while accepting a Conservative government might not necessarily have paid compensation either.

"I think every Waspi woman and campaigner genuinely believed that this government, the Labour Government, had they got elected, would do something," he tells Sky News.

"They'd all talked about it: Keir Starmer had talked about it, Angela Rayner talked about it, even Liz Kendall, who yesterday said they weren't going to do a single thing about it, had talked about it.

"So it's a big issue of betrayal.

"I'm not sitting here saying we would necessarily have done something about it. That's fair.

"But the point is this government has given everybody the impression that they would, and then they've come in, and now they're saying they wouldn't."

Here are some new comments from Chancellor Rachel Reeves, speaking to reporters this morning.

"I understand that women affected by the changes to the state pension age feel disappointed by this decision, but we looked in full at the ombudsman recommendations and they said that around 90% of women did know that these changes were coming.

"And as chancellor, I have to account for every penny of taxpayers' money spent.

"And given that the vast majority of people did know about these changes, I didn't judge that it would be the best use of taxpayers' money to pay an expensive compensation bill for something that most people knew was happening."

Image source, PA Media

More now from government minister Rushanara Ali, who tells BBC Radio 4's Today programme it was a "difficult decision" not to pay compensation for the Waspi women.

It's put to her that she previously called for "justice for the Waspi women", and Justin Webb asks what she meant by that.

"It was an important campaign," she says, noting the government accepts lessons need to be learned.

It's put to her that the ombudsman said compensation was owed.

"Studying the findings of the ombudsman is the basis on which that decision [announced yesterday] has been made in terms of compensation," she says.

She says the ombudsman found "the vast majority were aware of the change".

"The fact is that we have got a huge, huge job to do in terms of making sure that the conditions that pensioners live in in our country are improved and that’s why our focus is on protecting the triple lock," she says, referring to how the state pension amount is increased.

Ali adds that Labour inherited a "devastating set of issues" when it came into government.

Rushanara Ali, a government minister, has just defended the decision not to pay compensation to the Waspi campaign.

She tells the Today programme they don't believe a £10bn bill would be "fair and proportionate".

She accepts there were delays in telling women of the change in pension age, and lessons should be learned.

We'll have more from her interview soon.

Image source, UK Parliament

Waspi campaigner Jan Fulster tells BBC Breakfast she feels feels "very let down" by the government.

"We’d expected that the government would do the decent thing," she says.

She adds she was shocked by the decision not to pay compensation because many senior Labour figures had been supportive of the Waspi campaign while in opposition.

She's shown pictures of Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall supporting Waspi campaigners.

"It just feels as if it’s all been a lie," she says.

Labour risk looking like they're changing their position too oftenpublished at 07:49 Greenwich Mean Time 18 December 2024

07:49 GMT 18 December 2024

Henry Zeffman
Chief political correspondent

There are broadly two questions for the government over their Waspi decision: substantive and political.

On the substance: the government appears to have delivered the Waspi campaign a decisive blow after many years of arguments about the issue.

In making the decision, the government will have anticipated fury from the campaigners and it will have been a factor in their decision-making. They have evidently decided that this is something they are willing to shoulder.

In the House of Commons yesterday Liz Kendall, the work and pensions secretary, returned again and again to the statistic that 90% of affected women knew they were affected - meaning that blanket compensation for 1950s-born women would not be fair.

Would another government have come to a different decision? Perhaps not.

It's notable that the Conservatives yesterday urged the government to "own the choice they've made" but did not actually say that the compensation should be paid.

Yet there is political sensitivity, to say the least, for Labour here. In opposition for years, Labour politicians harangued Conservative ministers over this issue. Under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership during the 2019 general election Labour said they would deliver full compensation.

Sure, many of those who now lead the Labour Party were not sympathetic to Corbyn, but they stood under his banner all the same.

And Kendall personally identified herself again and again as, in her words, a "longstanding supporter of the Waspi campaign", while as recently as 2022 Sir Keir Starmer signed a pledge for "fair and fast compensation".

Whatever the ins and outs of this particular decision, the political risk for Labour is that to their opponents it becomes yet more evidence that Starmer and his party have changed their positions on too many issues.

As a reminder, the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman recommended compensation for "Waspi women" in March.

It said there should be, external "financial compensation for direct or indirect financial loss, loss of opportunity, inconvenience, distress or any combination of these".

The current head of the PHSO, Rebecca Hilsenrath, has now criticised the government's decision not to award compensation.

"It's great that the government are saying that our intervention will lead to service improvements and it's fair to say also that people who come to us, overwhelmingly, are motivated by wanting things to improve for other people," she tells Times Radio.

"But what we don't expect is for an acknowledgement to be made by a public body that it's got it wrong but then refuse to make it right for those affected."

• As a reminder, Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall said yesterday: "Given the vast majority of women knew the state pension age was increasing, the government does not believe paying a flat rate to all women at a cost of up to £10.5 billion would be a fair or proportionate use of taxpayers' money."

...Those are the words of Waspi spokeswoman Debbie de Spon, who has been speaking to our colleagues on BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

She says the government's decision not to pay compensation is "very disappointing".

Many Labour MPs, including frontbenchers such as Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall were "very supportive when in opposition," she says.

Speaking about the ombudsman's call for compensation in March, she says it "makes a mockery" of that system if the government can "cherry pick which parts of that investigation they choose to accept".

It’s put to her that research referenced by the ombudsman and the government indicates the majority of women did know about the changes.

De Spon says Kendall has been "rather selective" in her use of numbers, adding "it’s very clear to us that many Waspi women didn’t know".

"We’ve got enormous support in Parliament," she says, calling on that support to "pull together and take action to vote on an unresolved injustice".

Image source, Getty

In March, the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) published its report on whether women were properly told changes to the state pension age.

It said there was injustice and called for an apology and compensation.

Then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak suggested it was possible that the Conservatives would pay compensation, but former chancellor Jeremy Hunt wouldn’t confirm the government’s position.

Hunt said then: "We want to resolve it as quickly as we can, but there’s no secret vault of money. The money we would pay in compensation has to come from other taxpayers, so we do have to take time to get this fair."

Then shadow chancellor Anneliese Dodds said at the time: "Those women deserve respect, that's the most important [thing]."

Neither party committed to payouts in their 2024 election manifestos.

Image source, PA Media

The Waspi campaign is highlighting comments made by Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall - and the prime minister - before they came to power in July.

Both previously spoke of the "injustice" that the women faced, with such a post from 2019 still on Kendall's website, external.

The minister wrote then: "As a result of changes made in 2011, women across the UK are now suffering financial hardship – with 3,300 women affected in Leicester West alone! This injustice can’t go on."

Waspi has also posted pictures of Starmer with its supporters, and quotes from Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner saying the Labour government would compensate Waspi women.

In 2019, Rayner told the BBC: "The government failed the women who were born in the 1950s. They stole their pension."

Yesterday, Kendall apologised for a 28-month delay in sending letters about the pension changes, but rejected compensation.

She said the "vast majority of women knew the state pension age was increasing" and that a payout wouldn’t be fair on taxpayers.

• When the modern state pension was introduced in 1948, men who had paid enough National Insurance contributions could receive it at 65 and women at 60

• In 1993, the government announced it would equalise the age – the plan was to raise the qualifying age for women to 65 gradually between 2010 and 2020

• In 2010, the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition government decided to speed up the transition, and under the 2011 Pensions Act the new qualifying age of 65 for women was brought forward to 2018

• In 2015, the Women Against State Pension Inequality (Waspi) group was established. It says it is not against gender equalisation of the state pension age, but argues the way it was being implemented was unfair and women affected were not told properly
• In 2020, the state pension age for both men and women increased to 66

• In March of this year, a report from the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman found that the Department for Work and Pensions failed to adequately communicate the changes to when women could receive the state pension, and said those affected were owed compensation
• Yesterday the government officially responded to the report, accepting a finding of maladministration and apologising, but arguing it cannot justify paying compensation

Image source, Getty Images

Good morning from London.

We're focusing on the row between the Women Against State Pension Inequality (Waspi) campaign and the government - which was ignited yesterday when ministers said they wouldn't pay compensation to millions of women.

Waspi says that 3.6 million women born in the 1950s were not sufficiently informed of the rising pension age from 60 to 65, which was first announced in the 1990s, and then sped up in the 2010s.

Earlier this year, a parliamentary ombudsman recommended payouts of £1,000 to £2,950 for people affected - but Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall yesterday rejected the recommendation.

Kendall said the bill of around £10.5bn would not "be fair or proportionate to taxpayers".

The chair of the campaign group has called the decision an "insult". Waspi is pushing for payouts of up to £10,000 each for people affected.

Stay with us through the day as we bring you updates about the push by Waspi for compensation.