Solent campaigners welcome submission calling for accountability over ‘devastating’ maladministration as fight for state pension equality continues

Solent WASPI (Women Against State Pension Inequality) is part of a wider group of campaigners fighting for fair transitional arrangements for women born in the 1950s who have had as much as six years added to their state pension age with little or no notice.

This organisation campaigns for thousands of affected women in Portsmouth and the surrounding area, including Havant, Fareham, Gosport, Petersfield, and south Hampshire.

The All Party Parliamentary Group on State Pension Inequality for Women has sent a submission to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, which is investigating injustice caused by the maladministration it found by the Department of Work and Pensions.

In this document, the APPG said that ‘all typologies of injustice’ have been met, and that ‘in the cases of emotional, material, and physiological, they clearly fall within a category six injustice’.

Members of WASPI say that they ‘warmly welcome’ the submission from the APPG to the PHSO.

The findings, the WASPI statement says, ‘matches what we as a campaign have been saying for some time’.

APPG’s submission says that PHSO should find the DWP maladministration to be a ‘level six case’ on its injustice scale, a category which indicates the most serious situations ‘involving profound, devastating or irreversible impacts’.

In a statement, WASPI representatives said: ‘The impact of DWP maladministration on 1950s-born women has been as devastating as it is widespread.

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‘The APPG believes that the case for category six injustice is overwhelming and clear.

‘Women have had their emotional, physical, and mental circumstances totally obliterated by a lack of reasonable notice.

‘These impacts must be addressed, if we are to reach any kind of conclusion regarding this injustice.’

Shelagh Simmons, Solent WASPI co-ordinator, said: ‘We thank the APPG for this report.

‘We have been campaigning for six years on this issue.

‘It is time the government accepted its failings and agreed fair and fast compensation for the historic injustice done to 1950s women locally and around the country.’

A message from the Editor, Mark Waldron

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