The WASPI women have been failed

I’M going to make a wild prediction that in the various newspapers that publish Conservative MP

Mel Stride’s weekly column, he’s going to make a big claim that his government has solved the cost-of-living crisis (not true) and conveniently ignore his own government department failing women on pensions. A failure that has plunged many thousands of them into a deeper cost-of livingcrisis.

In 1995 the then Conservative Government decided to increase pension retirement age. It was done for good reason, although it impacted women more significantly than men. That phased introduction was then accelerated by the coalition government in 2011.

The problem with both these changes is that they were poorly communicated to women who were then effectively left with no, or little, time to change their plans for their retirement. That is an especial problem for women, who often take time out of work to raise children and so make smaller national insurance contributions, on which pensions are calculated. The net result has been to plunge many thousands of women into poverty just as they retire.

The failure to communicate properly the changes was made clear in a report by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) in 2021, and now in 2024 the PHSO has indicated that the government should compensate the women affected.

Mr Stride is the Pensions Minister and could have accepted the

PHSO report and sorted out a fair settlement for the affected women. Instead his department is deploying that well-known delaying tactic of