Over 250,000 women affected by state pension age changes have died while waiting for compensation

Over 250,000 women affected by state pension age changes have died while waiting for compensation, the Women Against State Pension Inequality (Waspi) campaign has revealed.

Close to four million women born in the 1950s had their retirement plans thrown into turmoil following DWP failures in communicating increases to the state pension age from 60 to 65, and later 66, and tens of thousands were plunged into poverty as a result.

Hundreds of thousands of women lost the opportunity to plan for their retirement, with some receiving notice of the change in age just months before they reached 60.

Many of the affected women had already retired or cut their working hours down by the time they found out they would not get their state pension at 60.

Last month, the Parliamentary Ombudsman accused the Government of ‘maladministration’ over delays to informing 3.8million 1950s-born women that their state pension age would be raised to 66.

The full flat rate state pension is £203.85 a week or an annual £10,600. The state pension is likely to rise 8.2 per cent to £220.60 a week or around £11,500 a year ahead of the next election.

‘A miserable end to a lifetime of hard work’

Susan Taylor is an affected Waspi woman whose sister died in 2019.

Susan says: ‘Both my sister and I were born in the 1950s and had our retirement plans completely devastated by the state pension age fiasco.

‘I lost her at 59 to cancer and was diagnosed myself with lung cancer at 62. I have no quality of life and the financial pressures I face are immense.

‘Some days it’s extremely hard to see anything but a miserable end to a lifetime of hard work as the fight for justice for so many women continues.

‘It pains me to think that she will never see the end of our campaign but I’m even more determined to fight to have our injustices properly recognised on behalf of all the women who are no longer with us.’

The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman’s stage two report has yet to be published, following a successful legal challenge against his original draft, which was found to be unlawful.

A final stage three report will then recommend to the Government what level of compensation should be paid to affected women for the hardship tens of thousands have faced. But campaigners say women have waited long enough and ministers should act now.

‘Justice delayed is justice denied’

The Waspi campaign was formed in 2015 to campaign for fair and fast compensation, with some of the worst-affected women only receiving a few months’ notice of a six-year delay to their state pension.

The stark milestone of a quarter of a million women’s deaths since the campaign’s formation means around 15 per cent of all those affected by the changes to the state pension age have since died.

Angela Madden, chair of the Waspi campaign, says: ‘For the 250,000 women who have died while waiting for this issue to be resolved, justice delayed is truly justice denied.

‘The Ombudsman’s investigation has been going on five long years, and it is two years since he confirmed the DWP was guilty of maladministration.

‘To keep women waiting a single further day for a proper offer of compensation just shows an appalling disregard for all of us.’

A DWP spokesperson said: ‘We support millions of people every year and our priority is ensuring they get the help and support to which they are entitled.

‘The Government decided over 25 years ago it was going to make the state pension age the same for men and women.

Both the High Court and Court of Appeal have supported the actions of the DWP under successive Governments dating back to 1995 and the Supreme Court refused the claimants permission to appeal.’

What is the controversy surrounding women’s state pension age increases?

For decades, the age at which you could claim your state pension benefits was 65 for men and 60 for women.

Plans to equalise men and women’s state pension age were outlined in 1995, when the then Conservative Government stated its intention of gradually raising women’s retirement age to 65 between 2010 and 2020.

This was followed in 2007 by a Labour announcement that both men and women would see their retirement age go up to 66 between 2024 and and 2026.

But in 2011, Chancellor George Osborne brought forward the timing of both changes to 2018 and 2020 respectively, hitting women particularly hard because their increases happened both sooner than expected and in quick succession.

The changes to women’s state pension age were not properly communicated, which resulted in millions of women born in the 1950s getting just five years’ notice of an extension to their pension age.

The women missed out on up to £50,000 due to the increase in the age limit.