{"id":396906,"date":"2026-01-29T13:14:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T13:14:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/396906\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T13:14:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T13:14:07","slug":"ministers-reject-waspi-calls-for-compensation-after-rethink","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/396906\/","title":{"rendered":"Ministers reject Waspi calls for compensation after rethink"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The government has kicked the can down the road for months, only to arrive at exactly the same conclusion it has always wanted to,&#8221; said Angela Madden, who chairs the group.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;This is a disgraceful political choice by a small group of very powerful people who have decided the harm and injustice suffered by millions of ordinary women simply does not matter.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The government said the vast majority of 1950s-born women already knew the state pension age was increasing, thanks to a wide range of public information, including through leaflets, education campaigns, in GP surgeries, on TV and radio, in cinemas, and online.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Others, however, said they were unaware of the changes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In 2024, a parliamentary ombudsman recommended compensation of between \u00a31,000 and \u00a32,950 each for those affected.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">While the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) could recommend compensation, it could not enforce it and the government rejected it.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The emergence of a 2007 survey, which had not been handed to then Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall, prompted a review of the government&#8217;s decision, with Kendall&#8217;s successor Pat McFadden promising to check no other documents had been overlooked.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Now, the government has said a flat-rate compensation scheme for those affected would &#8220;cost up to \u00a310.3bn and would simply not be right or fair given it would be paid to the vast majority who were aware of the changes&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">More individual compensation &#8220;would not be practical to set up&#8221;, it said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#8220;The government has kicked the can down the road for months, only to arrive at exactly the same&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":396907,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[84,4176,4174,4175,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-396906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-finance","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/396907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}