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The watchdog has told the government to compensate Waspian women hit by drastic changes to the state pension age in a damning report into the failures of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) said the group of women involved in the test case should be paid up to £2,950 because the DWP failed to properly inform them that their state pension age had changed.
The ombudsman said compensating all 3.6 million women born in the 1950s affected by the postponement of pension age could cost the government up to £10.5 billion.
However, DWP has told PHSO it “refuses to comply” with the compensation recommendations, a response the watchdog branded “unacceptable”.
PHSO said it was up to Parliament to vote to create a compensation scheme to provide “relief” to the millions of women affected by the pension changes.
The Ombudsman’s report recommended compensation of between £1,000 and £2,950 for the group of six trial claimants, or Level 4 compensation. The amount is far short of what campaigners had hoped for.
“Compensating all women born in the 1950s at Level 4 would require around £3.5 billion to £10.5 billion of public funding, but all women would be treated unfairly. We understand that this is not the case,” the report said.
The Waspi group (Women Against Inequalities in State Pensions) said 3.6 million people who were due to receive their pension at age 60 but had to wait another five or six years due to the increase in the state pension age. It is calling for all women to receive at least £10,000 in benefits.
In a long-awaited report concluding a five-year investigation, PHSO said DWP was guilty of “administrative malpractice”. It said the department’s failure to properly communicate state pension age changes meant some women “lost the opportunity to make informed decisions about their financial situation”.
PHSO chief executive Rebecca Hilzenrath said the ombudsman had “found DWP negligent in this case and ruled that the women affected were liable for compensation”.
She said: “DWP has made it clear that it refuses to comply. This is unacceptable. The department must do the right thing and be held accountable for failing to do so.”
Hilsenrath added: “Given our grave concerns that the findings will not be acted upon, and the need to remedy the situation as soon as possible for the women affected, we are proactively intervening with Congress. We called on the ministry to be held accountable.”
“Congress needs to act quickly now to ensure a reparations system is in place. We believe this will provide women with the quickest route to relief.”
Waspi campaign group claims millions of women born in the 1950s lost out because they were not properly informed that their state pension would be raised from age 60 to 65, just like men. There is. This age has since been raised to 66 for both men and women, and is scheduled to rise to 67 between 2026 and 2028.
Activists say a lack of information has led some women to quit their jobs and run into financial difficulties as they realize they don’t have enough money for retirement.
Angela Madden, chair of Waspi Group, said it would be up to the Conservative government and opposition parties to decide whether to put in place an appropriate compensation scheme.
“It’s now time for political parties to put their own money behind reparations for that order,” she said earlier Thursday.
“Waspi women are watching closely and waiting to see if the politicians who have supported this campaign for years will make a difference this time.”
Madden previously said: I Political parties could agree on a two-tier compensation scheme that would give every woman who received their pension much later than expected a £10,000 boost, and go beyond that for those most affected. It is said that
She estimates that around a third of the 3.6 million Waspi women, about 1.2 million, have suffered direct and tangible losses as a result of the pension changes, such as quitting their jobs.
But pension experts say the government could ultimately create a “highly targeted” compensation system, focusing only on those who can clearly demonstrate they have suffered a financial loss. I’m warning you that there is.
The Ombudsman published the first stage of its investigation in July 2021. It has been found that there were flaws in the way the DWP communicated changes to women’s state pension age.
The Ombudsman made it clear that in addition to paying compensation, the DWP should acknowledge its failures and apologize for the impact it had on the women affected.
The newspaper said the DWP “made no apologies or explanations for the failures and indicated it did not intend to compensate the women affected by the failures”.
More to come…