EMMA LEWELL-BUCK MP: The WASPI women deserve justice, they deserve proper compensation

The Pensions Act of 2011 under the Coalition Government brought forward changes that saw a woman’s state pension eligibility age increase from 60-years-old to 66-years-old.

However, they did not bother to let these women know this.

The few who were notified received only two years notice, yet the appropriate minimum notification period for a state pension age increase is supposed to be 10 years.

By the time they did find out some women had already retired, many taking up caring responsibilities for their elderly parents, grandchildren, and other family members.

The result has been women pushed into poverty.

Since 2015 we have been fighting this injustice, asking repeated versions of Tory Governments to right this wrong. They have refused.

As a founder member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for State Pension Inequality for Women – a group set up in Parliament to provide support and campaign with the WASPI woman – I was pleased to see this week the campaign took a significant step forward.

The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) has just agreed to look again at the way the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) communicated changes to 1950s women’s state pension age. It is hoped this will result in compensation.

WASPI women entered into a contract with the state on the understanding they would receive their pensions at the age of sixty, the state reneged on this and didn’t even bother to tell them.

Some have lost up to £50,000; some have passed away without justice. None of the WASPI women I have met are against equalisation of the pension age, what they are against is the underhand way it’s been handled. Other countries have equalised pensions without causing such hardship.

The WASPI women deserve justice, they deserve proper compensation.

I warned the then Government in 2015 that the WASPI campaign was not going away, it has not and neither has my support for them.