SCOTTISH Secretary Ian Murray is facing questions over a missing page on his website that previously saw him calling for compensation for Waspi women.
The Labour MP has insisted that he has not deleted anything from his ianmurraymp.com website – despite a key page no longer being available.
On July 28, 2021, while Keir Starmer was leader of the Labour Party, Murray penned a blog post after the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) found failings in the way the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) communicated changes in the state pension age.
“The government now has a choice to make. It can continue to drag affected woman [sic] through a long and protracted ombudsman process or it can get on the front foot and offer serious compensation to those affected. I sincerely hope they will choose the latter.”
The page was still present on Murray’s website on May 22, 2024, according to website archives, but is now gone.
It is not clear when it went missing – but the page has not been available since the Labour Government’s announcement that they would not pay compensation to Waspi women.
SNP MSP Gordon Macdonald shared Murray’s 2021 comments on social media, writing: “Labour’s Ian Murray’s deleted Waspi campaign page calling on the then Tory government to honour the ombudsman findings. #bluetoryredtory”
Former Scottish health secretary Alex Neil added: “What a charlatan Murray is.”
On Thursday, Murray told the BBC he had not deleted anything from his website.
In response to the comment, The National sent the missing page and the archive link showing it was available in at least May 2024 to the Scotland Office and asked where it had gone.
A spokesperson for Murray responded: “It is simply not the case that Mr Murray has deleted any posts. Some older website material is regularly archived, as is perfectly routine.
“Material about Waspi is still on Mr Murray’s website, and there are extensive posts on his Facebook page.”
Another post on Murray’s website, from 2019 while Jeremy Corbyn was head of Labour, remains available.
The now Scottish Secretary had personally urged Waspi women to complain to the ombudsman in order to get "recognition for this injustice".
However, after Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall said Waspi women would get no compensation from the Labour Government on Tuesday, Murray backed her.
He said that payments recommended by the ombudsman, of between £1000 and £2950 per person, were "not justifiable".
The payments were recommended after the PHSO found the maladministration had affected women born in the 1950s being told about changes to their pension.
