The Waspi campaign still stands a chance of securing victory for millions of women who lost out financially with the rise in the state pension age, legal experts say.
Compensation of up to £2,950 per person was recommended by an independent parliamentary ombudsman last year, but the Government said it cannot justify paying this.
The lawyers representing the Waspi women (Women Against State Pension Inequality) are those who won the Bradley case, an unprecedented High Court action back in 2007 brought on behalf of 75,000 people over the collapse of their final salary pension schemes.
They say there are clear similarities between the two cases. In 2007, the court ruled that the then-pensions minister John Hutton had acted unlawfully in rejecting a report from the ombudsman, and that the Government was guilty of maladministration and should reconsider offering victims compensation in line with the ombudsman’s recommendations.
The end result was a dramatic expansion to the compensation scheme the Government had established, later estimated by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to be worth an additional £935million.
Legal firm Bindmans, which took on the case in 2007 and is now acting for the Waspi campaign group, says the Government has accepted there was also ‘maladministration’ over changes to the state pension age.
Confident: Caroline Robinson, a lawyer at Bindmans working on the Waspi case believes it has a real chance of succeeding in a judicial review
This is because of a delay in writing to women to tell them about changes that would affect the year they qualified to receive their pension.
Bindmans’ team of lawyers working on the case are hopeful they can prove women have suffered an injustice as a result of delays and misinformation.
Caroline Robinson, a lawyer at Bindmans working on the case, says: ‘Can such cases be won? Yes they can.
‘We’ve acted on similar cases and there are precedents for such a case succeeding – including the High Court final salary pensions case in 2007.’
Ms Robinson notes that the legal team could not say with certainty that the Waspi case will succeed because the judge would need to consider the arguments thoroughly, including potentially from the ombudsman herself defending her own report.
‘What I can say is that our arguments are sound. Waspi has a real chance of succeeding in a judicial review,’ she adds.
Waspi: How we got here
The state pension age for women rose from 60 to 65 gradually between 2010 and 2018, taking it in line with men. It has since risen to 66 for both men and women and will soon rise to 67.
The DWP should have written to 1950s-born women by December 2006, informing them of the rise and how it would affect them. But the letters were delayed and sent out between April 2009 and November 2013.
A report by a parliamentary ombudsman in 2024 found the maladministration resulted in women losing opportunities to effectively plan for retirement. The report proposed compensation of between £1,000 and £2,950 for those affected.
But Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall rejected the recommendation in December shortly after the Labour government came to power. She said the total compensation bill of about £10.5billion would not ‘be fair or proportionate to taxpayers’.
The Government argues that two surveys it conducted in 2006 and 2014 showed that at least 90 per cent of 1950s-born women knew about state pension age changes and therefore had time to plan effectively.
Next steps in the Waspi campaign
Through law firm Bindmans, the Waspi group is now seeking a judicial review that could overturn the Government’s decision to refuse compensation.
Bindmans argues the Government has not given ‘rational’ and ‘cogent’ reasons for refusing compensation as the surveys do not prove what the Government claims.
A ‘letter before action’ has been sent to the Government by Bindmans. The DWP responded on Monday, again defending its stance and saying that by 2006, 90 per cent of 1950s-born women knew that the state pension age was changing and that it could not justify paying a total compensation bill of £10.5billion.
Bindmans is now following up with the Waspi campaign on the next steps. If Waspi are determined to continue, they will issue the judicial review claim to the Government by the end of this week.
The Government will have another chance to respond, and it will then go to a judge to decide whether or not to give the case permission to move forward in the judicial review process.
If the judge says yes, it goes on to a full hearing in about six to nine months’ time, where barristers for each side will make their arguments and the judge, or judges, will decide who is right and who is not.
There is the possibility of an appeal on the final decision. The Waspi group is raising money to fund the legal fees and has currently raised more than £150,000.
Uproar: A report by a parliamentary ombudsman in 2024 found maladministration resulted in women losing opportunities to effectively plan for retirement
What would success look like?
MS Robinson says the ideal scenario would be that Waspi wins the judicial review, and affected women ultimately get meaningful compensation.
But it’s not straightforward. If Waspi win the judicial review, the court will make a declaration that the Government decision made last December to block compensation is unlawful and can’t stand.
If Waspi is successful in all its arguments, the judge would rule that the Government was wrong to rely on the two reports at the heart of its decision, in which it argued there was no injustice suffered by anybody because Waspi women had been given timely and clear information about their own state pension age changing.
The Government would be forced to rethink its position and could not rely on the reasoning the court found was flawed.
Baroness Ros Altmann, a former pensions minister, agrees there is at least a chance that the Government could face a judicial review on its rejection of the parliamentary ombudsman’s recommendations.
She says the arguments put forward to defend the Government’s stance do not justify a complete rejection of any help for anyone.
‘Public money does of course have to be spent wisely, but to insist that not one woman was badly misled about when her state pension would start and that not one woman who did not know about the state pension age changes would have suffered or even been forced into hardship is simply not rational,’ Lady Altmann says.
‘I do think compensation for everyone (including me!) affected by the age rise is difficult to defend.
‘But I have always believed that some kind of hardship scheme to help those worst affected, which women could claim money from, would be the most sensible way forward and much fairer,’ she says.
However, not all lawyers think the Waspi campaign can achieve success.
Ian Hurst, an employment lawyer at Duncan Lewis Solicitors, said that while he has sympathy for the Waspi campaign, he believes that any further legal action is almost certain to fail.
‘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. 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.’
Ms Robinson says her team at Bindmans are aware that various lawyers say Waspi women are unlikely to get compensation.
‘They are entitled to their views, of course, but what really matters in judicial review is whether the Government’s reasoning stands up to scrutiny, or has been derailed,’ she adds.
‘The Government’s position, based on a small number of responses to small-scale surveys, is that not a single woman born in the 1950s suffered any injustice as a result of these letters being sent out years after they should have been and every one of them already knew what the letters said. Waspi disagrees with that, because it’s just not the case.
‘It is a baseless denial of the lived experience of a huge number of women. Many, many women did not know about the change, and demonstrably did make different choices to the ones they would have made if they had known.
‘Waspi will argue that the Government is unlawfully evading that fact and until it confronts it, it cannot begin to make a lawful decision on how to respond.’
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