Ombudsman rules thousands of WASPI women are owed pension payout – but will they get it?
Stung again: despite a ruling that they deserve compensation, WASPI women may not get the amount they want – if they even get paid at all by a government determined to ignore the rule of law.
This is not the wonderful outcome it seems at first sight.
The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) has said that potentially hundreds of thousands of women are owed compensation because of government failings related to the way changes to the state pension age were made.
But the Ombudsman’s office said the so-called WASPIs (Women Against State Pension Inequality) should receive payouts of only between £1,000 and £2,950 – much less than the £10,000+ each that they have demanded. This may still cost more than £10 billion.
Worse, it cannot compel the government to pay up – and has acknowledged that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has indicated it would “refuse to comply”, which was “unacceptable”.
So the Ombudsman has asked Parliament to intervene and force the DWP to pay up.
Downing Street is to consider the Ombudsman’s report but has given no indication as to whether it will pay compensation or simply issue an apology.
Is this another clear indication that we have a rogue government – and a misogynist one at that?
We now have a clear ruling – from the authority with power to make such decisions – that thousands of women who were born in the 1950s have been mistreated with regard to their pensions and should be compensated.
The offending government department should not have discretion to reject that ruling but should simply shut up and pay up.
The fact that the prime minister’s office is considering siding with the DWP against the Ombudsman indicates how weak Rishi Sunak really is.
He has happily spaffed hundreds of billions of pounds up the wall for a few rich Tory donors to lap up but when his government owes money to thousands of relatively poor women who have worked all their lives and only want a decent pension in retirement, he thinks he can get away with ignoring them.
It is despicable, gutter-level politics.
Still, he’ll be out of power by the end of the year – and it will be the responsibility of every WASPI woman to vote the Tories out. Let’s hope they have the sense to shun Labour as well and choose an Independent or Green candidate who will support them.
Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:
Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical
3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/
Join the Vox Political Facebook page.
4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com
5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/
6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical
7) Feel free to comment!
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
Cruel Britannia is available
in either print or eBook format here:
The Livingstone Presumption is available
in either print or eBook format here:
Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:
The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:
Having spent many years in the civil service I have a small bone I must pick with you. Government departments do NOT get to make their own decisions. ALL decisions of this magnitude are political and made by politicians. Civil servants will provide information, input and advice only. Often politicians will go directly against the advice eg joining the Inland Revenue and Customs & Excise Department and, of course, the changeover (on a single day) to the Tax Credit system – they were WELL warned what would happen.
I predict that the Government WON’T refuse this. I don’t think they’ll immediately grant it either. As we’ve seen with previous compensation schemes it takes a LONG time before money is paid out. They can promise it and leave it as a ticking time bomb for the incoming Labour government (surely they don’t believe they have a chance?) and therefore, perhaps, gain/retain some of the grey vote OR kick it into the long grass with an inquiry/commission and, again, let Labour clear the mess up. This may be the preferred option as they won’t want to admit to themselves that they are going to lose the GE and it allows them the room to still do nothing in the even they DO win..
I think men should be compensated too. No kidding.
Equality should have meant women’s wages going up to that of men and mens retirement going down to that of women.
What’s happened is that men’s wages have gone down to those of women bit by bit.
And women’s retirement has gone to to that of men.
How have we let this happen to us?
Plenty of miners never got their payout for pneumoconiosis because they passed on before tje govt decoded to pay out.
Asbestos workers, too.
The infected blood scandal
Postmasters.
Grenfell will be the same
So be on np doubt they’ll stall and obfuscate until most of those waspi women are brown bread before they decide to pay them a pittance.
And then there’s people like me, an unpaid carer who was refused the cost of living payments because I was/am on what they call ‘legacy benefits’.
They’ll shaft you any way they can.