Waspi threaten further legal action and another judicial review

The present impasse over whether 50swomen should receive any compensation at all after ministers refused to pay must cease.

WASPI who relied on the Parliamentary Ombudsman’s weak findings of partial maladministration to get somewhere between £1000 and £3000 compensation for the 3.5 million women who suffered up to a six year delay in their pensions have been totally defeated and are having to restart from scratch.

CEDAWinLAW, formerly BackTo60, are now pressing to avoid further legal action and go straight to mediation with the government – hence the letter to the PM Sir Keir Starmer, the chancellor, Rachel Reeves and the work and pensions secretary, Liz Kendall.

The government is now facing a two pronged attack over the issue from two groups with different approaches but both are aiming to provide some compensation for the 50swomen.

The approach by CEDAWinLAW is much broader than WASPI which is only concerned with getting some recompense for the partial maladministration Sir Robert Behrens, the former Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, made in his long drawn out findings even though he conceded that the women were not directly financially affected by their lack of knowledge.

CEDAWinLAW are putting forward a case that the women were both subject to discrimination by being the only group affected by the delay and by the fact that unlike men they did not have the opportunities to build up the numbers of years to get a full pensions by historic discriminatory measures such as being barred from making contributions.

CEDAW is also relying on two key points. The UK under Margaret Thatcher signed up to the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women  in 1986. This body is monitoring the UK’s progress in meeting the terms of the convention – and the issue of discrimination against 50s women is on their agenda in Geneva and will also be raised next month at a women’s conference on discrimination in New York.

Secondly the UK is moving domestically to accept that mediation is a better way of solving issues across the board rather than clogging up the courts with long running disputes. All this explained succinctly by Jocelynne Scutt, a former Australian judge and a women’s campaigner, in the video below

Now WASPI are planning to do the opposite and engage in a long war of attrition again in the courts against the DWP for throwing out any hope of compensation. Now having covered the long running judicial review by Backto60 from the initial hearing to the Court of Appeal ( the Supreme Court wouldn’t even hear it) this is committing their supporters to years of waiting and a huge financial burden running well into six figures to maintain the fight.

The scale of the issue can be shown by the pre action letter sent to by John Halford of Bindman’s to the DWP. Not only is he is asking the ministry to cancel the decision they made not to compensate the women but he gets involved in a long convoluted argument into why the women should be paid and into the minutie of the detail of various surveys the ministry undertook to make his case.. Given the courts preference to look at precedents he will not be able to escape the DWP making references to the previous judicial review and using it to their advantage to quash such an action. The full text of his letter is reproduced below.

Now buried in this is a U turn by WASPI. The letter states it would like to explore an alternative disputes resolution to solve the problem. This is extraordinary about turn because only last year CEDAWinLAW put forward the same idea and invited WASPI to be an interested party. John Halford sent for all the papers and flatly rejected the approach. Not only that but presumably on the orders of Angela Madden, who runs the WASPI company, decided to side with the DWP against CEDAWinLAW if it came to court. Again the DWP could use it against them if they get a good lawyer.

In many ways this is a very sad tale as no agreement is possible between any of the groups fighting to get justice for the 3.5 million 50swomen. which in the short term will suit the DWP who can play off one group against another. There is also no real leadership from the All Party Parliamentary Group on State Pension Equality for Women led by Rebecca Long Bayley, MP for Salford, who describes herself as a wife, mother and proud Socialist, to bang heads together and go for the government over this.

In the meantime the cohort is starting to die out which will be very convenient for all those MPs and ministers whose inaction just prolongs any justice.

But in the long term this issue, the axing of the winter fuel allowance and what I hear is going to be the biggest assault on disabled people’s benefits in a generation will lose Labour its core support and pave the way for Nigel Farage to be our next Prime Minister.