‘Moral debt’ over pensions women

JEREMY CORBYN has said society owes a “moral debt” to women who lost out on years of state pension payments when their retirement age was raised.

Speaking on a visit to Renishaw, near Sheffield yesterday the Labour leader said women born in the 1950s, known as Waspi (Women Against State Pension Inequality) women, were “misled”. And Labour has said it would make individual payments averaging £15,380 to the 3.7m women it claims were affected by the changes to the state pension age. But the Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) Paul Johnson criticised Labour’s plans, saying that many of the women are “actually quite well off ” and that the party has shown a “decisive lack of priorities”.

Questioned on Labour’s policy, which was not costed in the party’s manifesto, Mr Corbyn said: “We owe a moral debt to these women. They were misled. They’ve lost a lot of money.

“The women I’ve just been talking to have lost between £30,000 and £50,000 each because of this.

“They are dedicated people to their communities and their families, and they’re very angry about the way they’ve been treated.”

Mr Corbyn refused to say that the pledge to the Waspi women means going against Labour’s promises on borrowing only for investment, adding “the government is obliged to pay”.

He said: “It’s a moral debt we owe to these women and, had the court case gone the other way, or another court case goes against the government, the government would have to pay, the government is obliged to pay ... What we’re saying is we will pay it.”

Mr Corbyn also met a group of Waspi women in Renishaw, and told them he was “proud” of the policy. He said: “I’m very proud that we’ve got that clearly in our manifesto and I’ll be very proud to go into government and say ‘this is the policy on which we’ve been elected and this is the policy that will now be carried out to right the wrong and the injustice that’s been done to all of you’.

“I will do absolutely everything I can to make sure we win the election on December 12 and put that pledge into practice.”

Mr Corbyn added: “People understand the injustice that’s been done to you and the need for the country as a whole to accept the moral responsibility for putting it right.” However speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme, Mr Johnson said the policy’s estimated cost of £58bn is “a very, very large sum of money indeed”. He added: “I think there are two interesting things about that – one is the sheer scale of it, and of course it immediately breaks the promises they made in their manifesto just last week only to borrow to invest. So, they would need even more than their £80bn tax rises if they wanted to cover that.

“The other, I suppose, is just a statement of priorities or decisive lack of priorities, because there’s so much money for so many things, but they’re not finding money, for example, to reverse the welfare cuts for genuinely poor people of working wage.”

Women expecting to retire at 60 were told they would have to wait longer due to changes to the state pension age in 2010. In 2018 the retirement age for women rose to 65, in line with men. Waspi say they were not given enough time to prepare for the changes.

We owe a moral debt to these women. They were misled.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn on the women who lost out on the state pension.