The Green MP for Brighton Pavilion has criticised Labour for backtracking on promises to compensate women who have been adversely affected by pension rule changes.
Siân Berry was reacting to the news that the government has rejected financial help for the WASPI women.
WASPI stands for Women Against State Pension Inequality – and, in opposition, many leading Labour figures took up their cause.
The women, born in the 190s, had been due to retire at 60 but their retirement age was raised twice to equalise the pension age with men.
The issue is back on the news after the government rejected a recommendation by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman to pay compensation.
The ombudsman recommended payouts to women who had been affected by “maladministration” by the Department for Work and Pensions in not communicating the changes well enough.
During the week, Ms Berry said: “This is a very harsh decision, admitting wrongdoing but offering a bitter dose of nothing to a generation of women, caught out by this, who faced so many hurdles and prejudices in respect of their careers and earnings.
“I have so much respect for the brave WASPI women campaigners who, for nearly a decade, have campaigned hard on behalf of millions who were let down by this maladministration, just to be let down again.
“The government should reconsider this decision and look at how it can also do more to help women born in the 1950s win the same security in retirement as enjoyed by their male counterparts.”
At Prime Minister’s questions in the House of Commons on Wednesday (18 December), the Conservative opposition leader Kemi Badenoch also raised the subject with the Labour Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer.
Mrs Badenoch said: “For years the Prime Minister and his cabinet played politics with the WASPI women.
“The Deputy Prime Minister (Angela Rayner) said Conservatives were stealing their pensions. She promised to compensate them in full – another broken promise. Now they admit we were right all along.
“But let’s ask about another group of pensioners whose trust was broken. Since the Chancellor cut winter fuel payments, how many extra people have applied for pension credit?”
Sir Keir said: “The number one job of this government was to put the finances back in order after the last government lost control. They left a £22 billion black hole and we had to take tough choices.
“We made sure the most vulnerable pensioners do get the winter fuel payment and we have been encouraging them and driving up eligibility for pension credit.
“So she should join that campaign. But here’s the difference – because we’ve stabilised the economy, we can commit to the triple lock. That means that next April, pensioners get another £470.”
The Prime Minister said that the taxpayer could not afford the £10 billion compensation bill for WASPI women – and research showed that most of them already knew about the pension age changes.
He added: “This is a serious issue. Between 2005 and 2007 there was, I think, a 28-month delay in letters to women born in the 1950s about changes to pension age. That was unacceptable and it was right that the government apologised for that.
“In 2011 the former chancellor George Osborne accelerated those changes with very little notice. That equally was unacceptable and Labour opposed it at the time.
“It is a serious issue. It is a complex issue. The research shows … that 90 per cent of those impacted knew about the changes that were taking place.
“And I’m afraid to say that taxpayers simply can’t afford the tens of billions of pounds in compensation when the evidence shows that 90 per cent of those impacted did know about it. That’s because of the state of our economy.”
Good – they’ve been really screwed over by the Labour Government. It’s shocking how people like Peter Kyle, Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner have backtracked on their promises. The WASPI women quite rightly feel stung and let down.
More to come on the great Ponzi scheme known as the state pension.
It’s quite a difficult one this, isn’t it?
For sure the Greens in opposition can play fast and loose with the public purse – just as they did on both occasions when in control of Brighton and Hove council.
But the fact remains that we have an ageing population and it’s dumb to have women retiring at 60 when for most that’s still a young age. My own mum, a school teacher for three decades, then lived into her 90s, and she had more years retired on her pension than she had worked.
The WASPI women complain that the retirement age was put up, but they weren’t told about it. And I find that a bit weird because as a man I certainly knew I could no longer retire on a state pension at 65, and I will have to wait until I’m 68.
The real pension scandal is the private schemes we were pushed into in the 1990s, where we were paying chunks of our pay cheques month after month and later told the policies weren’t worth the paper the were printed on. Those schemes changed hands several times between building societies privatised under Thatcher, and the money we thought we’d invested never materialised. My own policy now pays me just £62 per month. (Should I now complain to our current government?)
Have Labour really got pensioners in their sights as a new tax cash cow, or are the Boomer generation simply being asked to do their/our bit, in a time of recession.
Surely, what Labour are actually doing is making it clear that there is no magic money tree? The Greens are still hugging theirs.
I think there’s a larger discussion to have in asking do pensions work with consideration for our much longer life expectancy? Now pensions are paying out for two to four times longer on average, is it sustainable in the long-term?
This topic feels like we’re trying to water a plant, whilst the house is on fire.