No payout for WASPI women

[ErrolTheDragon]

Fury as women hit by pension age rise denied payouts www.bbc.com/news/articles/czr36842nd6o

Wow... it hadn't occurred to me that the ombudsman report on this would just be ignored.

The 2011 stuff is the WASPI case. 🙄

Spoke to a friend who had attended Labour's conference. Said that the one demographic absent in every way from the conference were the elderly. Labour clearly don't give a shit for anyone over 65.

No, 2011 is state pension age increases for men and women being brought forward together to 66 to take effect in 2020.

2011 affected so many more than women born in the 1950s, and is not a waspi issue. That’s why the waspi ombudsman report and government response focus on the dissemination of information about the 1995 Act that increased state pension age from 60 to 65 for women starting in 2010.

In 2011 the end date for transition of the above was moved up to 2018.

They change implementation schedules all the time on laws. If you’ve been to,d for 15yrs a law is changing, it’s kind of on you to check for changed implementation schedules.

Sorry, it's still not clear to me what your question actually is. I've said what happened to me. I'm not going to engage further.

Look, I was directly affected by the 2011 changes along with 300,000 other women. I lost three years pension through them. It’s entirely a WASPI issue. It was the 2011 changes that resulted in the bonkers transition arrangements with virtually no notice.

Starmer also complained bitterly and publicly about the injustices facing students who suddenly had to start paying tuition fees - voted into law by politicians, many of whom had had taxpayer-funded university careers, often with grants as well.

Now, when tuition fees are being increased yet again, he's been spouting about how ridiculous and unrealistic young students are, if they expect taxpayers to pay for them. Entirely their fault, of course, for being young - and born after those who got it completely free (and AFAIK, not one has offered to repay their own tuition fees) had already pulled up the rope ladder behind them.

I don't care which party they belong to; I'm amazed that so many people seem not to realise how very often politicians rail furiously against a policy when in opposition but curiously don't do anything whatsoever to reverse it, once they're in power.

But surely one of your very central duties when in opposition - whichever party - is to make it your business to know and analyse all the figures in minute detail? Bearing in mind that you don't have any actual governing to worry about; what else would your job actually be?

If you don't know how the nation's finances are going, you can't just blame it on the other party for not telling you; you are woefully remiss and not doing the job for which you are paid to any acceptable standard.

This is what I really struggle to understand. Either you have pensions for everybody at an age when their ability to continue working is, on average, likely to be decreasing - with concessions to level up for those with disabilities and health problems that directly impact this - or otherwise why have pensions at all?

Surely nobody believes that everybody dying significantly younger than the state pension age - at the average ages of death based on life expectancy - was in perfect health and then just suddenly dropped dead when it was 'their time'; whilst those privileged enough to live long enough to receive it would all be suffering terribly in their later years and thus actually definitely need it?

Who decided to effectively reward the minority of people for living to a good old age but not the majority who didn't? Was it perchance politicians who did lovely indoor desk jobs, rather than having to work down a mine or scrub floors for a living, and had access to the best health care and family money to fall back on anyway?

Honestly I feel embarrassed for the waspi women. Imagine starting a massive campaign for 'justice' because you missed something completely flipping obvious.

How does someone in opposition know the future?

Hunt cut NI by 4%, unfunded, Labour, had to commit to this tax cut but its Labour who have to fund it... they didn't know about this 18 months ago, Hunt also didn't fund the public sector pay rises either or the PO and Blood scandals.

Labour in Govt have to find this money, around 30 billion... where from?

the Govt Ombudsman said that 90% of WASPI women knew about the changes in plenty of time - this report wasn't written when Labour supported the Waspi cause.

The Tax payer isn't a charity, the govt has no money of its own, it would be beyond irresponsible to waste 10 billion on this, when millions cannot get emg dental treatment or a new knee to enable them to go back to work.

I'm just a bit younger than the WASPI women (I think, though tbh I'm not exactly sure when the cut-off is). I never quite understood their case. I have many friends in that age group. Some are on very good pensions, having worked most of their working lives in public sector jobs with final-salary pension schemes now closed to younger workers. They were able to claim those work pensions at 60, again, something that younger workers won't be able to do. They don't need compensation, and they're enjoying a lifestyle that younger women working in those jobs won't be able to afford. Yes, the compensation would be nice for them, but they don't need it. I also have women friends of that age who worked in low-wage occupations, mostly pre-NMW. There was no way they could have saved for a pension, and they're now living on the state pension. The compensation would make a real difference to them.

What would both groups of women have done differently if they'd had more notice of the changing regulations? Nothing. My public sector worker friends wouldn't have felt the need to save more, they were already in good workplace pension schemes. My friends on low incomes couldn't have put more money aside for pensions, because they had no money to put aside.

It seems to me we're missing the point here. Anyone - WASPI age or younger - who can't afford to save for a pension is going to have to work until state pension age. The choice to retire sooner is a choice for people on higher incomes, or other sources of wealth. If the WASPI campaign had been for workers of all ages on low incomes - who are disproportionately women - I would have had more sympathy with it. But I think it's hard to justify a compensation payout for women regardless of income on the basis of age, when younger workers - again, mainly women - on low wages are going to have to work until they reach the rising state pension age.

How does someone in opposition know the future?

They don't - but they should be observing closely enough to know the present.

They may be powerless to be able to change what their opponents are doing right now; but the situation shouldn't come as a massive surprise to them when they eventually get into power again.

Hunt cut NI by 4%, unfunded, Labour, had to commit to this tax cut
There was no "had to" about it. It was entirely Labour's choice.
They did some vague promise which was purposely designed to fool people and then, when in power, started with the "if you read the small print, what we really meant was ..."

Yes, this is one thing I don't quite get: how can you be seriously hard up if retiring before you were actually getting the state pension - in some cases several years before - was even an option for you?

I also don't understand why there's not been a murmur about the men who have also had their state pension age increased from 65 to 66 - why is this framed as specifically disadvantaging women when it clearly affected both sexes?

Hunt cut NI just a few weeks before the GE, called unexpectedly.

It would be reasonable to expect the UKs Govt to have set aside monies for pay rises they themselves commissioned via pay review bodies and for tax cuts... they didn't.... how would Labour know this, even if they had a fair idea Hunt had done this, what can they do about it, with just a few weeks notice?

But back to the Waspi women, how do you justify paying 10 billion to 90% of Waspi women who knew v well about pension age changes?

Yes this is what I don’t understand. Why didn’t they keep working to the new retirement age? Unless they didn’t know until after they retired but how could that be? I really don’t understand this. My retirement age has sadly gone up but I’m not going to just retire at the original age anyway, I’ll have to keep working

It may not have been in the manifesto, but there are lots of examples of Labour MPs supporting WASPI women publicly so people would have taken from that that they wouldn't be shafted when Labour came to government

I disagree. Whatever you think of the decision, it's not remotely surprising. Rachel Reeves was asked about it during the election campaign and said "I haven't set money out for that".

Generally the support from senior Labour MPs was during the Corbyn era - I think the 2019 manifesto said it would be paid. But the 2019 manifesto said all sorts of things that Labour are now not doing, because it's 5 years later with a different leader and a different manifesto.

I'm not talking about the rights and wrongs of the decision itself. Just the complete predictability. Sunak kicked the can down the road, and if Labour were planning on paying it, they'd definitely have said so during the election (so would the Tories, but they weren't going to pay it either). But instead they specifically said they hadn't budgeted for it.

Apart from some who will back them no matter what on here I'd say this is coming back to bite for Starmer

Going by headlines on the lowest ratings for a PM after five months for over 40 years

Times Radio asking directly when Labour changed their minds

Labour MP really struggling

@ErrolTheDragon I was one of the people who did not receive a letter regarding the age changes!! I found out when I was at a birthday party 3.5years before i was due to retire! by now I should have had an extra £48000 in pension pay out!!!!! that is a shit load of money and now to get no compensation is disgusting!!!

How was it £48k ?

by now I should have had an extra £48000 in pension pay out!!!!!

Should have? Have they made an error in calculating your pension? Or are you just saying that under the 1995 rules you would have got your pension a bit earlier, but the 2011 changes mean you've had to wait a little bit longer?

Sorry but the £48k figure is ridiculous. They increased the state pension age, which they've continued to do. I'm mid thirties and will probably be working well into my seventies, if I get any state pension at all. How much am I owed then? When will I get my compensation?

I think people assume information was as available then as it is now. There were an awful lot of women who did not need to work, their news came from watching the 6.00 o clock news, if they had finished cooking the family evening meal by then. The assumption was their husbands pension would be enough for them both, they did not need to go out seeking information about pensions as we do now. Then perhaps they were widowed, and were not yet 66, and had an expectation they would get a pension in their own right. They are the women I do feel sorry for.

But as a single parent I was well aware of the change, in fact worked for DWP when the change came into being. I knew we would not get a penny, I did not expect anything from a Government who seem to be doing everything possible to make sure my retirement next year may not be able to be a full retirement. Voted Labour all my life, was active in my local ward. They can fuck off, not all pensioners were Tories, they are making it much easier for us to see Reform forming a Government, and that would truly be a disaster for everyone.

But isn't the hoped-for compensation meant to be for women who are claiming they were unexpectedly left in poverty, having made plans based on receiving their state pension at 60 - apparently without bothering to even double-check that this would still be the case before making such important plans and handing in their notice?

It's not meant to compensate for the disappointment at having to work extra years that you understandably would prefer not to have had to work (and incidentally earn more for those years than you would have got from a state pension).

The whole point of compensation is that it's meant to redress unexpected or unplanned consequences. If the government decided to equalise (and also increase) the pension age, it was firmly planned to become the new norm - so what would be the point in compensating to effectively nullify those changes that were deemed necessary?

If the rules changed across the board, then you haven't 'lost' any pension, as it would never have been available to you under the current prevailing rules, based on your age and DoB - any more than I 'lost' all the money I had to spend on preparing and paying for my driving test to get my licence, whilst my DGF was handed his licence without ever having to take a test (pre 1935) - because those were the rules in place then, decades before I was even born, and so which would never have applied to me.