Analysis shows 220,190 women will have died in the seven years since a campaign started to get women born in the 1950s compensation for failures to inform them about the pension age moving from 60 to 66.
The research was commissioned by Women Against State Pension Inequality (WASPI) and shows that the government has saved £3.8bn on compensation likely to be awarded to those affected, by allowing women to die waiting. Changes to the State Pension age, which were legislated for in 1995, were not communicated through targeted letters to the affected women until 2008. The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman found that Department for Work and Pensions was guilty of maladministration, concluding that, "The opportunity that additional notice would have given them to adjust their retirement plans was lost."
Despite the Ombudsman's findings and the rapid death rate of those affected, the government is choosing to wait for further reports before taking any action. The WASPI campaign is calling for an immediate one-off compensation payment of between £11,666 and £20,000, with the most going to women who were given the shortest notice of the longest increase in their state pension age.
WASPI spokeswoman Angela Madden commented, "The government's strategy of delaying inevitable compensation payments is a cynical attempt to time women out of what they are due. Since the Ombudsman has already found that women born in the 1950s were mistreated, the right thing to do is to put in place a compensation package right away. Doing so would end the agony for millions of women who have been emotionally, physically and financially affected by mistakes made in government."
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