Labour is being slammed for its decision not to compensate WASPI women after changes to the state pension age left millions of women out of pocket.
It is the latest move in what many critics have called ‘Labour’s war on pensioners’ after Starmer slashed the winter fuel payment for millions of elderly Britons.
The WASPI decision was announced yesterday by Secretary of State for Work and Pension Liz Kendall and has been lambasted as ‘another Labour U-turn’ to go with changes to farmers’ inheritance tax and national insurance rises.
Many Labour big beasts including Rachel Reeves, Liz Kendall, Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner all publicly backed the WASPI campaign in opposition, kicking the Tories for not agreeing compensation.
Now in government, those same Labour senior figures have rejected the WASPIs’ appeal at the first opportunity, prompting accusations of ‘sheer hypocrisy’.
Chancellor Reeves defended the decision, stating: “Given that the vast majority of people did know about these changes, I didn’t judge that it would be the best use of taxpayers’ money to pay an expensive compensation bill.”
This was after a parliamentary ombudsman recommended compensation of between £1,000 and £2,950 for each woman affected nine months ago.
This pales in comparison to the extra cash train drivers will receive after Labour awarded them inflation busting pay rises immediately after entering office.
Train drivers’ salaries are set to rise by an average of £9,000, from £60,000pa to £69,000. That means for every train driver awarded a hefty salary increase, roughly six WASPI’s could have been compensated.
The government have admitted bending to the rail unions on pay will cost the taxpayer £130million.
Taking that taxpayer bill and dividing it by the ombudsmen’s recommended compensation package reveals that between 44,000 to 130,000 WASPIs could have been compensated had Labour chosen to prioritise them over train drivers.
Labour’s denial of compensation for WASPIs is the latest move in what many older folks are seeing as a ‘war on pensioners.’
This started with Labour’s slashing of the winter fuel payment for up to nine million pensioners.
The move has left many pensioners choosing between heating and eating this winter, with warm hubs and food banks recording rises in old folk relying on their services.
Keir Starmer, who said pensioners using warm hubs was a clear sign of the Tories’ failure to protect vulnerable people, has since been embroiled in a hypocrisy row.
Labour defended the move saying they are taking tough decisions now to plug the Tories’ ‘£22billion black hole’.
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Today Ed Davey tore into Labour on GB News over the WASPI issue, stating: “The Ombudsman looked at this subject for five years and focused on the period back in the last Labour government when the DWP failed to notify women, and many of them just didn’t understand what was going on and weren’t aware of it.
“It’s the independent ombudsman that’s made these recommendations. I think the government needs to look at this, needs to change its mind, actually.
“I think people will be rather alarmed, and I’m afraid it tells a story about governments of all persuasions actually about how they respond to scandals.
“Whether it’s the Windrush scandal, the Horizon scandal, the contaminated blood scandal, and when eventually it’s clear that what happened what went wrong, governments drag their heels on compensating people who have clearly been wronged by the state, and I think if the state wrongs an individual, the state needs to put that right.
The Department of Work and Pensions have listed reasons why it thinks it could not remedy the situation.
These include: “the costs involved, the time it would take, the amount of resource it would involve, and the negative impact delivering a remedy would have on it being able to maintain other services.”
