WASPI women urge DWP to reconsider State Pension compensation before legal action is taken

dailyrecord.co.uk:

The Women Against State Pension Inequality (WASPI) Campaign have served the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) with a ‘letter before action’ informing them that legal proceedings will begin unless the UK Government reconsiders its decision to reject a compensation scheme for millions of women affected by changes to the State Pension age.The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman’s (PHSO) final report, published in March last year, recommended that compensation be paid to women born in the 1950s whose State Pension age was raised to be equal with men, but in a statement to Parliament in December, Work and Pensions Secretary, Liz Kendall MP, said taxpayers cannot afford what could be a £10.5 billion redress package.

Angela Madden, chairwoman of the campaign group, said members will not allow the DWP’s “gaslighting” of WASPI women to go “unchallenged”.

Campaigners say the UK Government’s reasons for rejecting the PHSO’s report, which recommended that the women should be paid up to £2,950 each, are “legally wrong”.WASPI, which has launched a £75,000 Crowdjustice campaign to fund legal action, says the Labour Government has 14 days to respond before the case is filed.The Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Liz Kendall, are among the senior ministers who backed the Waspi campaign when Labour was in opposition.An estimated 3.6 million women across the UK were affected by the change to retirement age, first announced in the 1990s.

This was later accelerated under the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government more than a decade ago.However, there was a 28-month delay in writing to inform them of the changes, which the DWP accepted and apologised for during the December statement.The