SNP must deal with WASPI issue

Women born in the 1950s paid tax and national insurance plus graduated pensions contributions at 33 and a third per cent – in other words, one week in three the entire wage was given over to the government.

Succeeding generations have paid 20 to 25 per cent.

In 2011 women heard through the press that they would not receive their state pension at 60 in 2013 but would have to wait until 2018 and age 65.

Meantime, men in the last few years have been able to claim pension credit if they are not working from the age of 60 to 65 whereas previously they could not.

Now, the SNP government at Holyrood, using the mouthpiece of Mhairi Black MP in Westminster, have admitted that they could use the welfare powers devolved to them in 2016 to make transitional interim payments to the women who are worst affected.

Those born up to April 1953 received their pensions at 60 in 2013. Those born at any other time in that year, have to wait until 2018 and age 65.

It is these women who should be given interim payments from the Scottish Government, without hiding behind Westminster’s failings, for one year .

This would go some way to righting a great injustice.

For Mhairi Black, a young woman who has latched onto the women’s pension issue to make a name for herself and use it as a stick to beat the Tories with instead of actually being of any practical use to these women, to ask “should they?” as she has done in the press, is outrageous.

Of course they should. What is the point of having a Scottish Government at all if we don’t do things differently here and better here?

We do not have prescription charges or tuition fees for our students, unlike England.

This MP is actually holding back the cause of these women and using them for her own ends. I have had flak elsewhere in the press for saying this by people who say they are “proud” to have her as their MP. A young woman who stands up in Parliament and demeans both herself and the office she holds by saying to another MP “you talk pure sh .... ” is nothing to be proud of. If our MP did that there would be calls for his resignation and I would be one of the people making them.

She, and others, have said that if these payments were made then the money could not be used for anything else. Exactly. Women do not care where the money comes from. It does not belong to any government. It belongs to the women.

That’s like going to the bank to cash in a fixed term deposit account only to be told by the teller that if they give the money to you they will not be able to give it to anyone else. Well, exactly!

The WASPI campaign does not speak for all women, only those who have joined it.

In the 1970s personal pensions and superannuation were only for the few and the vast majority of people had no choice but to pay graduated pension contributions in the knowledge that they would be counted towards their basic pension.

Now, everyone from next year is to get the same pension irrespective of contributions. In any civilised society and one which harnesses technology for the good of mankind and not just for profit, everyone would be retiring at an earlier age not later. Women do not need lectures on welfare. Everyone knows that pensions are not a benefit but the welfare powers given to the Scottish government last year provide for exceptional circumstances and they could be used for these women.

The Westminister government has already said they are not going to do anything and that these powers can be used.

This was all found out with a Freedom of Information request which I came across on James Kelly MSP’s twitter page.

Clare Haughey our SNP MSP is strangely silent on this, although both she and the former MP Margaret Ferrier were very vocal in their support of the WASPI women. Time to put their money where their mouth is I think.

I will take no lessons in socialism or economics from the SNP, originally dubbed the “Tartan Tories.”

The question for them is this. Do they want to do something now to bring some measure of justice to the women of 1953 who have waited the longest or do they want to continue to indulge in political point scoring and waste time so that 2018 comes round anyway and they won’t have to do anything?

I note that Jackie Baillie, the Labour MSP did not take our council leader John Ross’ advice and “bile her heid” but instead got on with the job. In passing, I have not heard an apology forthcoming from him for that and I hope that at the first full council meeting in September, councillors of all parties take him to task for this and make it very clear what is and is not acceptable behaviour.

Jackie Baillie wrote to Jeane Freeman MSP, the SNP’s welfare minister asking her to use the powers devolved to parliament to make these interim payments. I have yet to hear what was the reply, if any.

The Scottish Government should do the right thing and not use this or any other cause as a political pawn. I know women who are having to work ten hour days on zero hour contracts even while dealing with serious illness in their 60s when they should have been able to access the money which is rightly theirs.

I do understand that pension contributions are not put into a pot and then collected at a later date but are used to fund welfare payments at the time. The SNP has said why should they pay twice. It is the women who are paying twice. Once when they paid their contributions for 45 or more years and again having to pay them still in their 60s.

Yet the Holyrood government is content to spend £6million pounds of public money on the baby box vote winning gimmick, giving basic items to people who already have them or can easily afford them instead of concentrating welfare on those who really need it. I don’t agree with free condoms for prostitutes or needles for drug addicts either but nobody asked if it was okay to spend money on that.

It is only women in their 60s who are being subjected to moral blackmail because they want to access their own money paid from their own hard earned wages.

It is the SNP who needs to be sent homeward to think again on this one. They have been found out and called out and now they should pay out. Dorothy Connor Rutherglen