Wednesday July 21st 2021
Owen Thompson MP welcomed a major step forward for the WASPI women as an ombudsman’s report confirms failings in the way the UK Government communicated about the State Pension age rise.
The findings from the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman report published on Tuesday 20th July confirmed the DWP were too slow to contact women born in the 1950s about the retirement age rises, to enable them to adequately plan their finances. The report found they should have written to the women at least 28 months earlier than it did.
Mr Thompson said:-
“This report gives even greater urgency to the long-running campaign for fairness for 1950s born women. It confirms what millions of WASPI women across the UK have been telling the government for years – that the DWP did not make them aware of the rises to their pension age in time to let them adjust their financial plans.
“The UK Government were far too slow to act even when they knew a significant proportion of people affected were not aware of the changes. Instead, they were content to let 1950s born women bear the brunt of the change and struggle in poverty.
“This report will hopefully be a step closer to justice for the thousands of women in Midlothian who were badly impacted. I have hosted local WASPI meetings and raised their cases many times in parliament, but time and again their stories of hardship fell on deaf ears.
“Hopefully this report’s findings will make it much, much harder for the government to deny or ignore their cause.
“The UK Government must now act with greater urgency and do the right thing for the women who were left to struggle financially through their department’s failings. This report should be a wake-up call – they cannot keep ignoring the plight of women who bore the financial burden of the maladministered State Pension changes. They are not going away, and I will stand with them every step of the way.”
Read more on Ombudsman report HERE..
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