Waspi women will take legal action against the Government unless Labour ministers change their mind and offer them compensation over changes to the state pension age.
The Women Against State Pension Inequality (Waspi) campaign has written to the Government to tell ministers that they will be taken to the High Court if they do not think again on compensation payments.
Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) have been given a 14-day deadline to back down – or the Waspi campaign’s lawyers will launch judicial review proceedings.
The group has also launched a crowdfunding campaign urging their supporters to help raise the £75,000 needed for a High Court case.
Kendall sparked outrage among Waspi activists in December after she announced that a compensation scheme would not be a “fair or proportionate” use of taxpayers’ money.
The Waspi group had been pushing for at least £10,000 each for the 3.6 million 1950s-born women who expected their state pension at 60 but had to wait another five or six years.
It followed a 2024 report by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) which found the DWP guilty of “maladministration” for failing to properly notify women of the changes.
Keir Starmer’s Government said it accepted that there had indeed been maladministration – but dismissed the PHSO’s compensation recommendation.
Waspi campaign chair Angela Madden accused Labour of “gaslighting” 1950s-born women and said she was “confident” their case could be won in court.
“We are saying the reasons they [the Government] are not following the ombudsman’s recommendations are unsound and unlawful,” Madden told The i Paper.
“It’s definitely morally wrong – but we think it’s legally wrong as well,” said the veteran campaigner.
The Waspi group’s lawyers at Bindmans LLP argue that the Government’s reasons for rejecting the PHSO recommendation to compensate women are in breach of legal principles.
Explaining the rationale for its decision in December, the Government claimed that 90 per cent of Waspi women knew about state pension age changes – despite DWP failures to properly inform them.
However, the Waspi campaign alleges that the Government has misused the survey figures – arguing that they refer to a general awareness of pension changes across the whole population.
The campaigners say that only around 200 women born in the 1950s were asked the questions from a total sample size of 1,950 individuals.
“We don’t agree with their interpretation of those statistics,” said Madden.
“The Government has accepted that 1950s-born women are victims of maladministration, but it now says none of us suffered any injustice. We believe this is not only an outrage but legally wrong.”
Madden said she was confident Waspi women would back the legal action, as a crowdfunding campaign aimed at raising £75,000 in a month gets under way on Monday.
“There is a lot of anger. We have listened to our supporters, who said, ‘Please don’t give up, please carry on’. So the appetite is there,” she said.
“I think they will fund us – but it is entirely up to them. I would be very surprised if we didn’t get £75,000 in the first week.”
The Waspi group previously crowdfunded £120,000 from thousands of supporters for a successful legal action against the PHSO in 2023.
The watchdog had not initially accepted that Waspi women had suffered financial losses, but changed its mind during the judicial review. The ombudsman went on to recommend compensation of between £1,000 and £2,950 last year.
Madden said she accepted that even victory at the High Court would not necessarily means compensation payments for millions of Waspi women.
But the campaign is aiming to prove that the Labour Government’s decision was legally unsound in the hope it will force a U-turn from ministers.
“The DWP is acting as perpetrator, judge, jury and sentencer,” said Madden. “And that just ignores all of the checks and balances parliament has put in place to protect citizens from mistakes by Government departments.”
The Government is understood to be carefully considering the prospect of legal proceedings.
A spokesperson for the Government said it had accepted the ombudsman’s finding of maladministration “and have apologised for there being a 28-month delay in writing to 1950s-born women”.
“However, evidence showed only one in four people remember reading and receiving letters that they weren’t expecting and that by 2006 90 per cent of 1950s-born women knew that the State Pension age was changing.”
They added: “Earlier letters wouldn’t have affected this. For these and other reasons the government cannot justify paying for a £10.5bn compensation scheme at the expense of the taxpayer.”
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