The Women Against State Pension Inequality (WASPI) is a campaign group advocating for compensation from the Department for Work and Pensions for its failure to properly inform women of increases to their state pension age. Jess McCallum reports.
Many women born between the 1950s and 1960s were affected by this maladministration. They planned to retire at 60, only to find out that their state pension age had increased by as much as 6 years. This was due to two separate state pension increases aimed at equalising the age with men.
‘The equalisation thing wasn’t the issue for us; it was the way it was done. We weren’t properly informed by the Department for Work and Pensions,’ says Shelagh Simmons, co-ordinator for the Portsmouth WASPI branch.
An FOI request revealed that some women were put at a disadvantage. While the DWP did notify women born between 6th April 1950 and 5th July 1950 at age 58 years, 11 months, those born between 6th July 1950 and 5th October 1950 were notified at age 59 years, 2 months.
An investigation by the Parliamentary Ombudsman found that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) was responsible for failing to inform women of these changes, and that compensation of between £1,000 and £2,950 should be issued to each woman affected.
This came after Rachel Reeves, Chancellor of the Exchequer, stated in June 2024 that she had set aside no money for WASPI women due to a ‘black hole’ in public finances.
While Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Pat McFadden, has apologised for the delays, he argued, ‘women did not suffer any direct financial loss from the delay’.
But personal testimonies from Portsmouth women contradict this.
‘Prior to the last election, the Labour Party were fully on board with us,’ says Shelagh. ‘They posed for photographs with us holding placards expressing our support. Keir Starmer, Liz Kendall, Rachel Reeves and Angela Rayner made statements. So we were hopeful.’
‘It was a huge shock last December when Liz Kendall, who was then Secretary of State, went to the Commons and announced they weren’t going to pay us anything. More or less blaming us for the situation that we were in.’
Following the emergence of previously withheld evidence, the government briefly reconsidered its decision but in January of this year it reverted to its original position: not to pay out compensation to the WASPI women.
WASPI campaigner, C, explained the financial implications of this legislation for herself and her husband. ‘I lost approximately £50,000 over six years. We had to revalue what we were going to be doing in our retirement because I wasn’t going to be getting my state pension for another six years after that.’
‘In the end, what we decided was that I’d give up work at sixty, which was my due retirement age, and that we would just have to go without the money.’
‘They say that we were all sent letters, and they say that it was all advertised. I’m sorry, but it wasn’t. When I was at uni, I was working in the evenings, I was bringing up my family, looking after the house, all of that. You don’t have time to read the Financial Times.’
Despite researching her pension scheme in advance, C was misinformed. ‘No time ever did people working for the private workplace pension scheme say anything about not retiring at sixty, so it never actually entered my head that anything was going to be any different.’
‘I contacted the DWP at age 58. That’s when I found out that I wasn’t going to be retiring in two years; I was going to be retiring in eight years. That was pretty devastating.’
For C, this decision resulted in significant mental health struggles, which ultimately meant she couldn’t work past 60 despite the legislation. ‘That news, when I found out that, put me in a really bad downward spiral. I ended up having to be off work for quite a long time.’
‘It’s terrible, but because you’re between a rock and a hard place. You can’t win whatever you do. Depression is hard enough to deal with, let alone this on top of it.’
‘I felt the rug had been pulled from underneath me, after working all my life. I just sort of thought, Christ, what do you do it for?’
‘If I knew that I was going to lose six years of my state pension, I would have obviously started saving probably 10 to 15 years before retiring.’
When in opposition in 2023, Portsmouth South MP Stephen Morgan campaigned to ‘raise awareness of this injustice and to lobby the Government for a solution.’ But, since being in office, he has not publicly supported the campaign.
Amanda Martin, MP for Portsmouth North, has reaffirmed her support for WASPI women, stating, ‘I want to be clear that I support the women affected by these changes. This issue has not gone away, and neither has my determination to keep pressing it.’
Martin will be holding a coffee morning for women affected on Saturday, 21st March.
WASPI is currently taking legal advice on the next steps in its campaign.
Photo courtesy of Portsmouth WASPI.
