One of the things wrong with Britain is our inability to say no to campaign groups once they win a hearing on the One Show. One rare exception to that has been Starmer’s cabinet standing up to Women Against State Pension Inequality (Waspi) – the least deserving compensation group in the history of these isles.
At the beginning of this year, Welfare Secretary Pat McFadden recommitted the government to the decision to refuse compensation to the 3.6 million women born in the 1950s who claimed not to have been informed that their state pension age would rise to bring it into line with the male retirement age. McFadden was right to make that decision because the claim is beyond baseless.
That decision was one of the few genuinely excellent ones from this government because it would have meant more than £10 billion of public funds going to people who do not deserve it. The trouble was that the presumptive next prime minister, Andy Burnham, seemed to have decided to reignite the debate.
At a hustings in Makerfield yesterday, Burnham reportedly said: ‘I stick by campaigners that I support. I stuck by the Hillsborough families, I’ll stick by the Waspi women because they deserve some recompense for the unfairness.’
The Waspi campaign predictably jumped on this by issuing a statement: ‘While some politicians have broken their promises, it takes real courage to speak out and say what millions of people across the country and hundreds of MPs from all parties already know – that 1950s-born women deserve justice.’
However, following a backlash within the Labour party, Burnham has this afternoon already been forced to U-turn. A spokesman for Burnham told the FT: ‘He accepts the final decision has been made in relation to financial compensation but has indicated an openness to considering similar schemes on the Greater Manchester model.’ That would mean earlier access to travel discounts such as bus passes. But that climb down still concedes that they’re due some form of compensation.
Trouble is, they do not deserve anything of the sort. The Waspi campaign has been vocal yet ridiculous and unfounded. The group claims that despite individually addressed leaflets, information campaigns in doctors’ surgeries and relentless television and online advertising, it was not adequately informed of the pension age change and should therefore be compensated from the pockets of the rest of us.
The parliamentary ombudsman recommended compensation of £1,000 to £2,950 for each of the Waspis, but the government has refused the recommendation given it would cost the taxpayer (many of whom are unlikely to get a state pension at all) more than £10 billion.
Burnham would be right to reiterate his support if the decision to raise the age had been sprung on the Waspis to fill a budget hole. But that simply did not happen. The change was first announced by Ken Clarke in 1995. To think that it is anyone’s fault but their own that they had no idea this was coming in the many years that followed is ridiculous. I do not know how they can even believe it themselves.
Some of the examples the Waspi campaign provides as evidence for its ‘injustice’ are downright insulting to everyone else living through stagnant living standards. One such case is Ms R, who bought a retirement cottage in 2008. She was not able to keep up with the additional costs of owning the cottage and was forced to sell it. She then said that, if she had realised she was not getting her state pension at 60, she would never have bought it.
Ms R’s property empire did not stop there. She also purchased a flat in 2012, which meant she could claim Jobseeker’s Allowance for only six months after losing her job in 2015. She had planned to use her state pension alongside her private pension to cover the running costs of her property portfolio and now blames not knowing that she would not receive the state portion at 60 for the fact that she could not actually afford any of it.
This is old hat that should have been put to bed
These are the people to whom the Waspi campaign – and now, seemingly, our next prime minister – wants your hard-earned cash to go: people who made disastrous financial mistakes because of their inability to budget or pay attention to the multitude of letters sent to them and the public information campaigns they ignored.
Anyway, this is old hat that should have been put to bed. Pensioners already get more from the state than anyone else. Almost one in four of them live in millionaire households. The idea that it would somehow be ‘just’ to give the Waspis bus passes before other OAPs – let alone find £10 billion from the dwindling number of people in work and business – for a bung to people already protected by the triple lock would be laughable as well as lamentable.
But it is also cruel of Burnham to reignite this debate. Cruel for all of us because of the risk of having to pay unjustified costs, but cruel too to the Waspi women for providing them with false hope when he could never seriously justify such a policy in office – as he’s found out in the 24 hours since making the comments.
It also tells us something worrying about Burnham’s judgment. If he cannot tell the difference between a genuine miscarriage of justice and an entitled lobby group that we have already listened to for far too long, and which wants compensation for failing to read the post, can we really trust his judgment on anything else?
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