Campaigners from Women Against Statement Pension Inequality (WASPI) have highlighted who could benefit from possible compensation over State Pension age changes.
WASPI fights for millions of women who said their retirement plans, finances and health were disrupted due to sudden increases in their pension age without proper notice.
The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman is looking into the matter and WASPI hopes a compensation of at least £10,000 will be recommended for each affected person, Birmingham Live reports.
SNP MP Alan Brown told the House of Commons that this sum would be the “most appropriate” for any payout from the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP).
Final reports from the ombudsman regarding any injustice are expected soon, including recommendations on possible financial remedies. So, who is most affected by the hikes in the State Pension age?
The complaints largely stem from changes introduced in the 1995 Conservative Government’s State Pension Act which raised women’s State Pension age from 60 to 65, aligning it with men’s, and the 2011 Pension Act that further elevated the State Pension age to 66 for both genders.
WASPI has highlighted who is eligible for any compensation offered as a result of how the changes were introduced. It stated: “Because of the way the increases were brought in, women born in the 1950s – on or after 6th April 1950 to 5th April 1960 – have been hit particularly hard.
“Significant changes to the age we receive our State Pension have been imposed upon us with a lack of appropriate notification, with little or no notice and much faster than we were promised some of us have been hit by more than one increase.”
It turns out, an astonishing 3.8 million ladies have felt the impact. WASPI also notes that since 2015, 270,000 of these women have sadly passed, never seeing the financial correction for the abrupt pension alterations forced on them. This has reportedly saved the Treasury a whopping £4 billion, campaigners calculate.
According to WASPI, notifications were sent a massive 14 years following the 1995 Pensions Act, to women born from April 6, 1951, to April 5, 1953.
A sizeable portion of these women learnt about the rise in their retirement age just under a year before they were due to claim their pensions. Tragically, many others saw only two, three, four or five years’ advance warning.
WASPI has highlighted: “Women were given as little as one year’s notice of up to a six-year increase to their State Pension age, compared to men who received six year’s notice of a one-year rise to their State Pension age.
“Many women report receiving no letter ever and others say letters were sent to the wrong address despite notifying the DWP of the address change.”
