Women dying before they get pension justice

A woman born in the 1950s, entitled to pension compensation, will die every 14.5 minutes in 2022.

 

That is the sobering statistic which has been uncovered by research undertaken by the Women Against State Pension Inequality (WASPI) campaign group.

 

Now WASPI 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.

 

A number of women on Arran have retired but are having to wait until they are 66 to receive their state pension and many have joined the Cunninghame WASPI group.

 

Research undertaken by the database company Statista in March 2022, analysed ONS figures on the deaths of the number of women in a given year of a certain age.

 

The figures showed that 220,190 women born in the 1950s will have died in the years 2015-2022, all of whom will have been affected by changes to the state pension age.

 

If these women had been compensated on the basis WASPI has campaigned for, they would have received a total of £3.8bn from the Exchequer.

 

WASPI spokeswoman Angela Madden said: '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 all-party parliamentary group on state pension inequality for women, said: '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.'

 

Liberal Democrat treasury spokesperson Christine Jardine MP said: 'One of the first people who came to see me when I was elected in 2017 was a WASPI woman and ministers still haven't managed to get her, and the millions of others affected the justice that they deserve for the hardship that they have been through.

 

'The ombudsman has ruled that there was mismanagement and the government needs to acknowledge that, take responsibility now and ensure that something is done to help support these women who have suffered too much already rather than before many more have died.'