WASPI campaigners have fought for years to get DWP compensation (Image: Getty)
WASPI campaigners will be back in Parliament for a key assembly as they proceed to call for compensation from the DWP. Ministers announced in December 2024 there would be no compensation for the tens of millions of Nineteen Fifties-born ladies represented by WASPI (Women Against State Pension Inequality) and other marketing campaign teams.
But the prospect of payouts is back on the desk, as the DWP announced in December 2025 it would retract its earlier resolution and challenge a new one. The Government said there was new evidence they needed to think about. As the campaigners await the new resolution from the Government, DWP officers will face questions from the Work and Pensions Committee this week (January 21).
The committee is calling the division to account after the Government’s watchdog, the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO), has raised “serious concerns” about the division’s lack of motion on the WASPI challenge.
WASPI represents ladies born in the Nineteen Fifties who were impacted by their state pension age rising from 60 to 65 and then 66. They claim the DWP did not give them enough discover of the change, with many left unaware proper up to the last minute, ruining their retirement plans.
The Ombudsman beforehand investigated the challenge, and discovered that there was ‘maladministration’ from the DWP, as they should have despatched out letters to the ladies sooner. In its authentic resolution in 2024, when Labour ministers said they would not present compensation, they did settle for the Ombudsman’s discovering of maladministration.
They pledged before Parliament that they would work with the DWP to develop a “detailed action plan” so classes could be learnt from the debacle. But over a yr later, the Ombudsman says there has been little progress – and now the Work and Pensions Committee is demanding solutions from the DWP.
Paula Sussex, ombudsman and chair, said in a earlier letter to the Work and Pensions Committee: “I have serious concerns about the significant delays in the implementation of the actions that DWP committed to undertake and the communication with my Office in relation to the state pension age investigation.”
The letter continues: “Taking action to address these acknowledged failings should not be dependent on any decision about financial compensation. I am very concerned that stopping this work indicates that DWP is deprioritising the need for remedial action. It is certainly a disservice to the department’s service users and complainants.”
WASPI marketing campaign chair Angela Madden said there will be representatives from the marketing campaign watching the committee assembly. She said: “I think it’s helpful that the DWP know that we are still there and that we’re still interested in everything that they do.
“We are combating for compensation but we also need them to improve. We really need all of the Ombudsman’s suggestions to be applied including higher communications for all people affected by the DWP’s work.”
Asked if the committee meeting could help put some pressure on the Government to finally award compensation in its new decision, Ms Madden said: “This is the approach Parliament maintain the Government to account, through these conferences.
“I don’t know if it can direct the work of the DWP, because that’s up to Pat McFadden [Secretary of State for Work and Pensions], but they can perhaps give them strong suggestions about what they feel they should be doing.”
A earlier incarnation of the Work and Pensions Committee, under the earlier Conservative Government, did call on the Government to set out plans for compensation, in May 2024. But this proposal did not transfer ahead as the committee disbanded shortly afterwards, when the General Election was called.
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