The government has announced that it will reconsider its rejection of compensation for women hit by changes to the state pension age.
The announcement comes amid a High Court legal challenge between Women Against State Pension Inequality (WASPI) campaigners and senior government lawyers, which was due to begin on 9th December. However, the government says it has now withdrawn from the process to reconsider new evidence which has emerged from 2007.
The WASPI campaign centres around the pension age of women born between 1954 and 1960, who were affected by the 1995 Pensions Act which increased women's state pension age from 60 to 66, in line with men.
Ministers accepted wrongdoing in December 2024 but refused to pay any compensation to the 3.5 million affected women, despite the Parliamentary Ombudsman recommending payouts of between £1,000 and £2,950.
Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden has now admitted that undisclosed evidence from 2007 was not shown to his predecessor Liz Kendall when she decided to deny the compensation.
However, WASPI says the evidence is one of the DWP’s own surveys from 2007 - and campaigners say the government has now backed down to avoid losing next month's judicial review.
McFadden said he would look again at the decision, but stressed that this does not necessarily mean WASPI women would get compensation.
In a Commons statement, Mr McFadden said: "We will approach this in a fair and transparent manner.
"Retaking this decision should not be taken as an indication that Government will necessarily decide that it should award financial redress. The work will begin immediately, and we will update the House on the decision as soon as a conclusion is reached.”
If the WASPI legal challenge is successful, the High Court could force ministers back to the drawing board to reconsider the Parliamentary Ombudsman’s report, though they are unable to directly force the DWP to compensate WASPI women.
Angela Madden, chair of Women Against State Pension Inequality (WASPI), said: "WASPI are challenging the decision the government made last December after the country’s longest running Parliamentary Ombudsman investigation, followed by months of deliberation.
“The previous pensions secretary, Liz Kendall, confidently told Parliament there were “two facts — that most women knew the state pension age was increasing and that letters are not as significant as the Ombudsman says” and that they meant “that there should be no scheme of financial compensation to 1950s-born women in response to the Ombudsman’s report”.
“This was, of course, complete rubbish and a gaslighting denial of WASPI women’s lived experience.
“The government seems to accept that it got at least one of those crucial so called ‘facts’ completely wrong because officials did not show her a DWP-commissioned report that completely contradicted it.
“That is scandalous – and all the more so because the Government has, until now with the hearing just a few weeks away, been defending our legal case on the basis that it is hopeless.
“It has said it will reconsider, and this time the Minister will be shown the withheld report. Why did that not happen in the first place? Why was that basic mistake not admitted when WASPI began its legal case? Why has the reconsideration not already happened?
“We do not know the answers to these questions yet. But we do know the government is desperate to avoid a judge scrutinising its decision-making and so backpedalling away from the imminent hearing.
“The move also vindicates what WASPI has been saying all along – the government’s decision on the Ombudsman’s report was fundamentally flawed. What this means for the case is a more complex question and we are considering our options with our lawyers.”
“The only correct thing to do is to immediately compensate the 3.6 million WASPI women who have already waited too long for justice.”
