Ministers concede in WASPI women battle as campaigners accuse them of “gaslighting”

WASPI CAMPAIGNERS say ministers are “gaslighting” them as the Government says “new evidence” has come to light – despite this evidence being one of the DWP’s own surveys from 2007.

The Work and Pensions Secretary told MPs last night that the Government’s response to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO)’s report on maladministration in the communication of changes to State Pension Age is to be withdrawn and reconsidered.

In a letter to WASPI’s lawyers, the Government says it is not taking further steps to defend WASPI’s legal challenge to that decision which it says is ‘academic’ given the reconsideration announcement.

WASPI campaigners have raised more than £250,000 to fund their legal challenge and were set to face down senior Government lawyers in the High Court on 9 and 10 December.

This is a major milestone for WASPI campaigners who are fighting for compensation for 1950s-born women who were not properly notified by the DWP of changes to their State Pension age.

At the eleventh hour, the Government says it has accepted that its response to the Parliamentary Ombudsman is legally indefensible.

The DWP relied on two surveys to argue that its failure to send personalised letters to women affected by the changes would have made no difference to what they knew and that, in any case, most women were aware of, or could have found out their true State Pension age.

These surveys were used to claim that women had not suffered injustice and that compensation would not be appropriate.

WASPI has always maintained that these surveys were not a sound basis for rejecting the ombudsman’s recommendations that women be compensated for the DWP’s maladministration and highlighted that the Minister had not been provided with all the relevant evidence before reaching her decision.

This included the DWP’s own research, commissioned by them in 2007, that suggested 1950s-born women would have read and taken in the contents of personalised letters about their State Pension age.

Angela Maden, Chair of Women Against State Pension Inequality (WASPI), said:

“WASPI are challenging the decision the Government made last December after the country’s longest running Parliamentary Ombudsman investigation, followed by months of deliberation.

“The previous Pensions Secretary, Liz Kendall, confidently told Parliament there were “two facts—that most women knew the State Pension age was increasing and that letters are not as significant as the ombudsman says” and that they meant “that there should be no scheme of financial compensation to 1950s-born women in response to the Ombudsman’s report”.

“This was, of course, complete rubbish and a gaslighting denial of WASPI women’s lived experience.

“The Government seems to accept that it got at least one of those crucial so called ‘facts’ completely wrong because officials did not show her a DWP-commissioned report that completely contradicted it.

“That is scandalous – and all the more so because the Government has, until now with the hearing just a few weeks away, been defending our legal case on the basis that it is hopeless.

“It has said it will reconsider, and this time the Minister will be shown the withheld report. Why did that not happen in the first place? Why was that basic mistake not admitted when WASPI began its legal case? Why has the reconsideration not already happened?

“We do not know the answers to these questions yet. But we do know the Government is desperate to avoid a judge scrutinising its decision-making and so backpedalling away from the imminent hearing.

“The move also vindicates what WASPI has been saying all along –the Government’s decision on the Ombudsman’s report was fundamentally flawed. What this means for the case is a more complex question and we are considering our options with our lawyers.”

Further information on WASPI’s court case can be found here: https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/waspijustice/