I Join The Angry WASPIs
Once again, the government lets them down
My mother has suffered a number of injustices at the hands of the DWP/HMRC regarding her state pension.
Firstly they changed the date of her retirement by five years and didn’t tell her. So when it came close to retirement age, and she was in ill-health, she discovered she had to carry on working for another five years.
Then, in the week before retirement, they removed ten years of state pension credit due to a number of inept errors on their part. So instead of getting a full state pension (which requires 35 years of contributions), she would now only have 25 years of contributions. We had to borrow money to pay for an extra ten years – but we had to pay at today’s rate, not the amount it would have been years ago if the government hadn’t made mistakes.
Even after paying for all those years she still didn’t get the full state pension. They made deductions every week due to their claim that she opted out of the state pension for 19 years in order to pay into a private pension instead. So they knock off £398.32 a year as a result. The idea is that a private pension should pay the same as, or more than, what you lose. Except her private pension was only active for a few years and for most of those she never paid into it. As a result she gets £33-50 a year from it. It’s obvious there have been more errors in the government records, but they refuse to acknowledge this.
Lastly, over the years they assigned her about seven different National Insurance numbers. Eventually they deleted most of them and told her to just use the last one, but there was never a letter or confirmation that the HMRC had correctly transferred any state pension credit from those other numbers to her current one. And now they say they don’t have the records any more, so … tough.
That’s a very truncated summary. There were many other issues, but I don’t want this to be the endless screed it would be if I covered every mistake made by the government. But just for fun, here are some other articles.
A Senior Judge Has Suggested Charging The Government For Every "No-Brainer" Benefits Case It Loses In Court. Sir Ernest Ryder, senior president of tribunals, said the quality of evidence provided by the Department for Work and Pensions is so poor it would be “wholly inadmissible” in any other court.
‘Truly appalling’ revelations ‘show DWP is subverting justice’ at appeal tribunals
We joined WASPI - Women Against State Pension Inequality Campaign. It’s an organisation trying to get justice for women affected by the way the government messed up their pensions.
I then represented my mother at two tribunals. One was against the DWP. The judge agreed my mother had suffered due to DWP incompetence, but said they could not award compensation – so that was a waste of a year. The second tribunal was against the HMRC recently, and we have not heard the judgement yet, but do not hold out much hope. The judge said he couldn’t consider the National Insurance Number aspect and we would have to go to a third tribunal for that, but after four years of battling and getting nowhere, I can’t face another grinding process like this.
In March there was some hope:
The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman said that the government was at fault and had not notified women (such as my mother) of the change in state pension age. So at last there was acknowledgment of the first of her issues, which we had said was unjust all along.
But the plot thickens. Here’s a quote from the article:
However, the ombudsman cannot compel the government to pay compensation, and said the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) had clearly indicated it would “refuse to comply”, which was “unacceptable”. As a result, the PHSO said it was “taking the rare but necessary step of asking parliament to intervene”.
So much for UK justice. The government claims there are procedures in place, but even after years of battling, and even when the body appointed to decide on justice makes a good decision … then the government just says “Nope, we’ll ignore that.” Just as they do with ignoring Israel’s (and their own, and the USA’s) war crimes when it suits them. Because the powerful feel they are above the laws, even ones they made.
Needless to say, with a Conservative government, it’s no surprise that one of their departments is sticking its fingers in its ears. But Labour are just as bad on every important topic, from foreign policy to the environment. Labour since Corbyn was forced out just seem like baby Conservatives, parroting whatever daddy Conservative says, to the point where both now defend genocide and colonisation.
On this topic of pensions, too, it became clear Labour were going to ignore the plight of WASPI women:
As the article says:
“MSPs have backed the Scottish Government in a call for compensation in full to be paid to women impacted by state pension inequality. However, Scottish Labour chose to abstain on the motion. […] The UK Labour Party instructed their counterparts in Scotland not to commit to any sort of compensation scheme.”
The DWP and HMRC have shown a mixture of ineptitude and often dismissive rudeness in my dealings with them on my mother’s behalf. The UK government has ignored the advice of its own Ombudsman, because it doesn’t like the result. Conservatives and Labour both just want the issue to go away.
The WASPI campaign page has an updating ticker with how many women have died while trying to get justice. Obviously Labour and Conservatives are waiting until they are all dead, and the issue resolves itself without them ever needing to apologise or make reparations. Both have been in government over the years, and both had thousands of opportunities to fix this.
All I can say is that I have been close to this issue, and fully support WASPI. Affected Women should receive an apology and compensation. It’s the least that women like my mother deserve, but until we get rid of Conservatives and Labour, I doubt justice will be a priority for this or many other topics.
Promoted by Karl Drinkwater (Green Party) at The Gate, Keppoch Street, Cardiff CF24 3JW.
Disclaimer.
How awful for your poor Mom!