What Does WASPI Stand For – And Why Are Its Campaigners Clashing With The Government?

The Waspi women are locking horns with the government this week – but who are they and what are they campaigning for?

What does Waspi stand for?

It means Women Against State Pension Inequality.

What does it do?

The group represents women who were born in the 1950s and who were impacted by increases to their retirement age.

They want fairer retirement payouts after changes to the state pension age, intended to equalise it across genders, meant they were out of pocket.

Women’s state pension age was increased from 60 to 65 so it was equal with men’s between 2010 and 2018.

Both men and women’s state pension age was changed to 66 in 2020, and is set to rise again from 66 to 67 between 2026 and 2028.

So Waspi have campaigned for compensation from the government, claiming they weren’t adequately informed about the change – some were left struggling to pay bills, others working through ill health.

According to Waspi, more than a quarter of a million women have died since the campaign began.

Why are those in Waspi in the news this week?

The government has chosen not to give the campaign group any compensation, even though many individual ministers – including Keir Starmer – supported Waspi when Labour were in opposition.

Work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall told the Commons on Tuesday that it would not be “a fair or proportionate use of taxpayers’ money” to pay up to £10.5 billion to those impacted.

It comes after the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman published its second report into the issue in March 2024, having looked into the saga for five years.

This report found that those affected had not been adequately informed about the changes – so therefore needed an apology and payouts.

It called for parliament to “act swiftly” to set up a compensation scheme, offering between £1,000 and £2,950 for each person impacted.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has not acknowledged its errors or tried to put things right, the watchdog said in March.

The report stated: “We recognise the very significant cost to taxpayers of compensating all women affected by DWP’s maladministration.

“Compensating all women born in the 1950s at the level four range would involve spending between around £3.5 billion and £10.5 billion of public funds, though we understand not all of them will have suffered injustice.”

But the government was never obliged to follow these recommendations of the watchdog.

How has Waspi responded?

Waspi chairwoman Angela Madden said: “The government has today made an unprecedented political choice to ignore the clear recommendations of an independent watchdog which ordered ministers urgently to compensate Waspi women nine months ago.

“This is a bizarre and totally unjustified move which will leave everyone asking what the point of an ombudsman is if ministers can simply ignore their decisions.

“It feels like a decision that would make the likes of Boris Johnson and Donald Trump blush.”