Almost a quarter of a million women who had their state pension age increased without adequate warning have died without receiving compensation, according to the latest figures from the campaign group seeking to get them redress.
Analysis carried out by Statista shows that over the past seven years 220,190 women affected by these changes will have died. These women, all of whom were born in the 1950s, saw their state pension age moving from 60 to 66. The research was commissioned by Women Against State Pension Inequality (Waspi), who have been campaigning for the past seven years for compensation for this group.
This latest research follows a ruling by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman that the Department for Work and Pensions is guilty of maladministration. The PHSO and is currently investigating the harm caused.
Changes to the state pension age, which were legislated for in 1995, were not communicated through targeted letters to the affected women until 2008. This led the PHSO to conclued that “The opportunity that additional notice would have given them to adjust their retirement plans was lost.”
The report continues, “DWP failed to take adequate account of the need for targeted and individually tailored information…Despite having identified there was more it could do, it failed to provide the public with as full information as possible.”
The Waspi campaign is calling for an immediate one-off compensation payment of between £11,666 and £20,000, with the most going to women who were given the shortest notice of the longest increase in their state pension age. Some were given only one year’s notice of a six-year delay to their retirement.
These latest findings come just before the chancellor’s Spring Statement. These Waspi figures show that the government will have saved £3.8bn on compensation likely to be awarded to those affected, by allowing women to die waiting for what they are owed.
The government has to date resisted calls for compensation to be paid.
Waspi spokeswoman Angela Madden says: “The government’s strategy of delaying inevitable compensation payments is a cynical attempt to time women out of what they are due. The Chancellor is effectively banking on the grim reaper saving him more and more money each year, leaving women struggling to pay their bills in retirement and lacking in trust in government.
“Since the Ombudsman has already found that women born in the 1950s were mistreated, the right thing to do is to put in place a compensation package right away. Doing so would end the agony for millions of women who have been emotionally, physically and financially affected by mistakes made in government.”
Andrew Gwynne MP, joint-chair for the APPG for State Pension Inequality for Women APPG says: “These figures are absolutely shocking. 1950s born women have been found to have been victims of DWP maladministration in a wide-ranging investigation conducted by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman.
“They were not properly informed of changes to their state pension age and were not given the tailored and targeted information they required to make reasonable adjustments to their retirement plans.
“Despite these findings, the Government continues to turn a blind eye and prevaricate on the issue. Enough is enough. Their justice is long overdue.”
Dr Julian Lewis, Conservative MP for New Forest East adds: “There is little doubt that many women’s plans for retirement were utterly undermined by a change in their retirement age which was in advertised in advance. The government needs to demonstrate more humanity in this distressing situation”.
