Waspi campaigners have accused the previous Conservative Government of “kicking the can down the road” by not compensating them and warned that Labour may be “guilty of the same thing” after the Chancellor failed to set out plans for compensation in her Budget.
The Women Against State Pension Inequality (Waspi), born between 6 April, 1950 and 5 April, 1960, expected to get their state pension at 60, but had to wait till 65 or 66 after the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) failed to adequately notify them of changes to their state pension age.
This prevented millions of women from appropriately planning for retirement, leading many into financial hardship and poverty.
A report by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) in March suggested that the DWP was guilty of “maladministration” over the failure to properly inform women of changes to their state pension age and called on the Government to pay those who “suffered injustice” between £1,000 and £2,950 in compensation.
While Rachel Reeves laid out plans to compensate victims of the Post Office and infected blood scandals in her budget on Wednesday, she made no mention of plans to compensate Waspi women.
Former civil servant Clare Wilkins, 66, of Bingham, Nottinghamshire said that she was forced to “live hand to mouth” after finding out that she would be receiving her state pension at the age of 66 rather than 60.
“I was in poverty for 2 years,” Ms Wilkins said. “I retired at 60 on my Civil Service pension and had sold my house, but when the equity from my house ran out, my rent was 60 per cent of my income.
“Instead of savings, I’ve got a bank loan and an overdraft. I’m nowhere near making up for the pension that I lost, which was about £45,000.”
Ms Wilkins accused the Government of “kicking the can down the road” by failing to compensate women who were not informed of changes to their state pension.
“So many women have been poor or died battling this, but the battle continues,” Ms Wilkins said.
The Waspi group estimates that at least 270,000 affected women have died during its campaign.
While this is the first year Ms Wilkins will receive her state pension, she is not eligible for pension credit or other income-based benefits, meaning she will not be receiving a winter fuel allowance under Labour’s new rules.
“I waited till I turned 66 to get my state pension, then found that the first thing this Government announced is that it’s going to scrap the winter fuel payments.
“That’s a big blow for me, especially with fuel prices rising.
“I suffer with depression, so anxiety is an issue for me,” Ms Wilkins said, adding that not “being able to make ends meet with money” as result of the winter fuel payment cuts has taken its toll on her mental health.
“It’s a precarious existence,” she told i.
Waspi campaigner Debbie De Spon, 69, had to wait an extra six years to claim her state pension.
She said: “We’re concerned that the Conservatives kicked the Waspi issue down the road – kicked the can down the road – and if Labour don’t do something soon, they’re going to be guilty of the same thing.
“We need them to act and we need them to act quickly before any more Waspi women die.”
The DWP said that it cannot speculate about the outcome of the Budget, but admitted that the PHSO’s report requires “serious consideration”.
A DWP spokesperson said: “We will continue to listen respectfully to the women involved, and ensure we take on board any lessons learnt.”
Frances Neil, 70, of south-east Essex, said she was “shocked” after being told she will not be receiving her state pension less than a year before she planned to retire from her job as a headteacher.
“The impact was enormous. I suddenly was not going to receive what the state had promised for my whole working life, without sufficient notice to plan or prepare.”
Ms Neil told i that she continued working part-time as an education consultant after she turned 60 to “make up for the shortfall of the state pension which I had added to my plans and was not going to receive”.
“It was part-time, but it did bring in a trickle of money that breached the gap between what I was expecting and what I had.
“Many Waspi women have had to forgo their dreams, aspirations and a comfortable life,” she added. “If you are faced with no money coming in suddenly, that is a terrible shock. There was the stress of that, along with the stress of carrying on in employment.”
The modern state pension was introduced in 1948. For 60 years, men and women that made enough national insurance contributions received their state pension at 65 and 60, respectively.
The Pensions Act 1995 was set to increase women’s state pension age from 60 to 65, making it the same as men’s, between 2010 and 2020.
This process was accelerated by the Pensions Act 2011, which raised women’s state pension age to 65 in 2018, before increasing both women’s and men’s state pension age to 66 by 2020.
The PHSO’s March report investigated historical complaints that the DWP “failed to provide adequate, accurate and timely information” about changes to the state pension age since 1995.
The report found “maladministration” after information about changes to the state pension age “was not reaching the people who needed it most” from 2005 onwards.
The PHSO also found that the “DWP did not adequately investigate and respond to complaints about these issues”, adding that there were “also avoidable delays in its complaint handling”.
The state pension age is set to rise to 67 between 2026 and 2028 and 68 between 2044 and 2046.
