The Waspi campaign awaits a crucial High Court decision on whether their judicial review can proceed, a key step in their fight for compensation of up to £2,950 for affected women. What are their chances?
The Waspi campaign is still fighting for victory, despite the government recently stating it would not pay compensation to women affected by the increase in the state pension age. Waspi – which stands for Women Against State Pension Inequality – has been battling successive governments for years over how the rise of the state pension age to bring it in line with men was handled.
Waspi – the story so far
The state pension age for women rose from 60 to 65 between 2010 and 2018, to be the same as men. The state pension age for both men and women has since risen to 66, will rise to 67 in 2028 and is scheduled to rise to 68 between 2044 and 2046.
The Waspi campaign group was started in 2015, objecting to what it describes as the “unfair way” the original changes to the state pension age were implemented with “inadequate or no notice”.
Waspi says hundreds of thousands of women born between 6 April 1950 and 5 April 1960 were hit particularly hard, with not enough time to re-plan for their retirement after being told their retirement age had increased by up to six years with little notice. The government argues that affected women had been given clear information well in advance of the changes and that it will not be paying compensation.
However, it has acknowledged that there was an initial two-year delay that saw letters start to go out to affected women in 2007, rather than 2005. In 2024, an investigation by the independent Parliamentary and Health Services Ombudsman recommended payouts of between £1,000 and £2,950 each for affected women.
The previous Conservative government had already said it would not pay any compensation. And in December, Liz Kendall, the Work and Pensions Secretary, said that the Labour government would not be making any payments.
Next steps in the Waspi campaign
Waspi is pressing ahead in its challenge to the government’s decision to reject the recommendation of the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman to award compensation for affected women. The group recently raised £180,000 to fund the legal action.
Through law firm Bindmans, Waspi is challenging the government’s decision by judicial review. Judicial review is a High Court process to determine whether government decisions are ‘lawful’.
Before Waspi’s case can reach a full hearing, a judge has to first decide whether or not to grant permission for the case to proceed. Waspi has submitted its written legal arguments to the court and the government has now filed its initial arguments in response.
Waspi has also asked the court for permission to rely on an expert report by Professor Adams of Oxford University. The report analyses and challenges the research relied on by the government to argue that Waspi women did not suffer injustice as a result of the the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) communication of state pension age changes.
Waspi has also filed a reply to the government’s initial legal defence and has applied for a “costs capping order” from the court. That order is needed to ensure that Waspi does not risk having to pay unlimited legal costs if they do not succeed in their claim.
The papers will shortly go to a judge to decide whether permission will be granted for the claim to proceed to a full hearing in the High Court. Waspi expects to receive that first decision from the Court within the next two to three months.
“Now we know what the government’s arguments are, we remain absolutely determined to fight on.” says Caroline Robinson, a solicitor at Bindmans.
Waspi scam warning
So far, there’s no compensation for affected women. So beware of scams suggesting otherwise. There have been social media posts and articles going round saying that the Prime Minster, Sir Keir Starmer, has announced that thousands of women will receive up to £2,950 compensation from April. This is not true and is a scam to get you to share personal information with fraudsters.
The Waspi campaign recently posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, that it had been alerted to several scams asking Waspi women to share personal information in order to claim compensation.
“They are all SCAMS. No compensation scheme exists yet. Please don’t share any personal information,” the post said. Anyone who has given their personal data to a potentially fraudulent website accidentally should contact Action Fraud.
Can Waspi win compensation?
Lawyers at Bindmans believe Waspi has a real chance of succeeding in showing that the government’s decision that women did not suffer injustice and should not be compensated, was unlawful. Even if they do succeed, it’s not certain this will lead to a new decision by the government to award compensation to those affected.
Bindmans argues that the government has not given “rational” and “cogent” reasons for refusing compensation, beyond saying it cannot afford to pay a collective £3.5 to £10.5bn in compensation. Robinson says: “Many women did not know about the delays to receiving their state pension and would have made different financial decisions had they been clearly informed.”
However, others think Waspi are unlikely to win compensation. Steve Webb, the pensions minister from 2010 to 2015 and now a partner at consultancy LCP, says that while he has sympathy for the Waspi campaign, he believes further legal action is unlikely to succeed.
“Their argument is based on maladministration, not unlawfulness. The courts cannot force the government to pay compensation when the law itself was valid. Previous challenges have all failed and this case is unlikely to be any different. While the campaign’s cause is understandable, this remains a political, not a legal one. The only hope would be that they could attract enough sympathy amongst ministers and the public at large to force the government into a U-turn,” he explains.
The government says the estimated total cost of compensation would be £10.5bn, which public finances cannot afford. A spokesperson for the DWP said the government had apologised for there being a 28-month delay in writing to 1950s-born women to notify them of upcoming changes to their state pension age.
“However, evidence showed only one in four people remember reading and receiving letters that they weren’t expecting and that by 2006 90% of 1950s-born women knew that the state pension age was changing,” they added.