AIBU in thinking the government have made the correct decision not to blanket pay all WASPI women £3k? This goes against the Ombudsman recommendations to pay between £1k-3k to every WASPI women.

[caringcarer]

At the time it was in every newspaper for weeks, in the radio and on the TV news a lot of coverage via the media. Most women of this age agree they knew about pension age changes. At the time it was huge. I fail to understand how any women could not have known unless they lived off grid. No individual letters were sent out to the women who would be affected. The Ombudsman's recommendation was that a blanket payment of between £1k-3k be paid to all WASPI women. Labour have just announced no money will be paid out at all. It would have cost the taxpayer up to £10.5 billion pounds on top of the huge amount of my ney it has cost to review it for several years. It is money that the government just don't have. Assuming lessons have been learned and any future changes will see DWP send out letters to any individuals who it will directly affect. The only worry is that it sets a precedent of ignoring what the Ombudsman's recommendations.

Because while in opposition, Starmer and crew supported the Waspi women, took advantage of lots of lovely photo opportunities, said how unjust it all was, and then dumped on them from a great height.

Because it’s not party political. A Tory government would have made exactly the same decision and attracted the same criticism - just from different people. You can bet your bottom dollar if they’d withdrawn WFA it would have been just the same.

It was a 2 year change in notice period, announced in 2011, from 2020 to 2018.

Now i happen to think the retirement age should be flexible as not all jobs can be done at an older age, chucking people onto benefits, whilst they wait for their pension.
People should be able to take SP earlier, at a reduced rate, whilst perhaps working reduced hours, Germany allows this.

How would anyone plan differently with slightly less notice?

Nope, the right wing press would have been supporting it, with constant examples of wealthy pensioners spending the WFA on holidays etc..

Same with Waspi's, it would have all been tea and sympathy BUT the country cannot afford it, thanks to Labour causing the Global Financial Crash & Gordon Brown selling off the UKs Gold reserves.....

It was a 2 year change in notice period, announced in 2011, from 2020 to 2018.

It wasn’t. Some women were impacted in 2013.

Morally the money should be paid to those affected by the rise in pension ages.

However

Morally we shouldn't saddle the young with record levels of debt. Young people will never get the pensions that they currently have to fund for older people, and that's without the £10 billion extra.

So really, sometimes there is no good choice available.

And this is basically what the Ombudsman's report concluded. It suggested making a payment across the board because of the impossibility of identifying everyone affected at a reasonable cost and within a reasonable time frame.

The government could equally abide by the report if it identified those who have actually suffered a loss and recompensed them, but it's chosen not to do this either. I think that's very unfair on some of the women, but I don't think they all have cause for complaint.

The Ombudsman got it totally wrong.

Tax payers money isn't there to give handouts to people who don't deserve them.