Humza Yousaf urges ‘current and future’ PMs to pay WASPI women State Pension age compensation

dailyrecord.co.uk:

Scotland’s First Minister has urged Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer to be “on the right side of history” in delivering compensation for women impacted by changes to the State Pension age.

Humza Yousaf has written to who he said are the “current and future” incumbents of Downing Street after he met with Women Against State Pension Inequality (WASPI) campaigners outside the Scottish Parliament on Thursday.It follows the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) report which ruled some women born in the 1950s were not adequately informed of the impact of the changes.

For more than 60 years, men received their State Pension at 65, while the threshold was 60 for women, despite concerns the move was unfair due to the longer life expectancy of women.Moves to equalise the issue began with the 1995 Pension Act with the age for women increasing to 65 between 2010 and 2020.However, it was accelerated in 2010 to reduce the overall costs of pensions, with the new state pension age brought forward to 2018.

But the Ombudsman report ruled accurate and timely information had not been given to millions of women in the UK, including 335,000 in Scotland.Following a demonstration outside Holyrood on April 18, the First Minister said: “Westminster’s continued refusal to provide compensation to women affected by this national scandal for years has been a shocking dereliction of duty.“It is abundantly clear that after years of inaction, WASPI women must get the justice, apology and compensation they deserve.“I urge both the current and future occupants of 10 Downing Street to be on the right side of history, and am willing to work with both Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer to ensure that the historic injustices faced by the WASPI women is