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Compensation for women who have suffered losses from changes to the pension age must be “fair” to taxpayers, Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt has said, warning it could cost up to £10.5bn. I answered and said.
He suggested that organizing compensation for the millions of women affected would “take time” and warned that “there is no secret vault of money”.
Mr Hunt’s comments follow last week’s report that the group Waspi (Women Against Inequality in State Pensions) should receive up to £3,000 in compensation per person.
“We want to resolve this issue as soon as possible, but there is no secret vault of money,” he said.
“The money we were paying in compensation has to come from other taxpayers. So it needs to take time to hold this fair.”
Mr Hunt argued that the issue of women affected by changes to state pensions that were not properly communicated was complex and needed to take into account many of the same factors as other cases such as Horizon and the infected blood scandal. did.
He denied the government was leaving a “huge backlog of bills” in the next parliament, adding on Sunday’s Laura Kuenssberg program on the BBC:
“The reason for that is because of the Ombudsman report on Thursday, but we also received reports from the High Court and the Court of Appeal in 2020, and the Department for Work and Pensions acted completely within the law and complied with the law. It’s because you didn’t comply.” Discrimination.
“So it seems like it’s saying something different, but we need to figure out the obvious difference between the two.”
This comes as the Parliamentary Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO), in its damning report into the failures of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), urged the government to provide up to £2,950 compensation to women hit by the state’s major changes. It happened after I told him he should. Pension age.
But this is far less than the £10,000 the Waspi organization will provide to all 3.6 million affected surviving women who would have had to wait an additional five or six years to receive their state pension.
The ombudsman said it could cost the government between £3.5 billion and £10.5 billion to compensate all women born in the 1950s affected by the postponement of pension age.
PHSO chief executive Rebecca Hilzenrath said after the report was published that the ombudsman concluded there had been “mismanagement by the DWP” and that “the women affected owe compensation”. Stated.
“DWP has made clear its intention to refuse compliance. This attitude is unacceptable. The department must meet its obligations and be held accountable for failing to do so,” she said.
“Given our grave concerns about the Department’s possible non-compliance with our findings and the urgent need to redress the situation for the women affected, we request Congressional intervention. , we have taken proactive steps to ensure accountability for the department.”
She added that “Congress must act now to establish a reparations system” as this would be “the quickest means of providing relief to the women affected.”