KEIR Starmer is being urged to confirm whether he is still committed to compensating women affected by the change to the state pension age if he becomes prime minister.
Women Against State Pension Inequality (WASPI) was an organisation founded in 2015 and calls for justice for all women born in the 1950s affected by changes to the state pension age.
Because of the way an increase to the age was brought in with very little notice, women born during that time have suffered financial hardship with not enough time to re-plan retirement.
Last year Starmer was photographed with WASPI campaigners pledging that he supported the “fair and fast compensation” for 1950s-born women.
Former shadow minister Rebecca Long-Bailey publicly challenged the Labour Leader earlier this year to hand the WASPI cohort a multi-million pound settlement previously promised by Jeremy Corbyn.
The Alba Party are now calling on Starmer to clarify whether he would pay compensation to those affected given he has performed an ever-growing list of policy U-turns this year.
Labour have recently turned their back on implementing a wealth tax and scrapping the two-child benefit cap.
Women affected by the state pension age changes are eagerly awaiting the verdict of an investigation into the failures of the Government’s communication of the policy. The report from the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) could recommend an award of compensation for the injustice the women have faced.
Alba MP Neale Hanvey (below) said Starmer “cannot be taken at his previous word” and must confirm his stance.
He said: “Keir Starmer’s Labour party have spent the summer recess selling out their principles and u-turning on key policy commitments.
“So far, they’ve decided to keep the Tory bedroom tax and will no longer scrap the immoral and abhorrent two-child benefit cap - a double whammy on the most vulnerable, if they are elected to government.
“Last year, Starmer pledged that he supported the fast and fair payment of compensation to WASPI women, but Labour pledges aren’t worth the paper they’re written on.
“WASPI women have been treated appallingly by successive governments. They deserve to be compensated properly for the maladministration of the UK Government, and Keir Starmer must today commit that should his Labour party form the next UK Government they will immediately compensate every affected 1950s woman.
“They have waited for this wrong to be righted for far too long already.”
The WASPI campaign has identified some 3.8 million women born in the 1950s who suddenly found they would have to work many more years when the state pension age was increased to 65 between 2016 and 2018 and then to 66, for both men and women across the UK in October, 2020.
WASPI is not against equalisation, however, campaigners do not accept the "unfair way the changes were implemented with inadequate or not notice."
The movement have called for an immediate one-off compensation payment in acknowledgement of the financial and emotional hardship caused by the failure of communication by the Department for Work and Pensions.
The campaign argues for the most substantial compensation to go to women who were given the shortest notice of the longest increase in their state pension age.
The PHSO found that 1950s women were victims of maladministration in stage 1 of its investigation.
The PHSO's stage two report concluded that maladministration in DWP’s communication about state pension age and about national insurance qualifying years, and its complaint handling, did not lead to all the injustices claimed, but this is being revisited.
Labour have been approached for comment.
