50s women pensions: Will rival attempts to speed up compensation for the 3.6 million work?

Posted on May 17, 2023 by davidhencke

While I have been away there have been significant developments in the long battle to get justice for the 50swomen who lost tens of thousands of pounds through maladministration, discrimination and lack of communication over the six year rise in their pension age.

Like everything in this long tortured tale the developments have not been straight forward.

Basically two separate initiatives have been launched. WASPI after first going along the route of seeking justice for 50swomen through Rob Behrens the Parliamentary Ombudsman, suddenly turned on him threatening him with a judicial review and launching a crowdfunder to fight him which raised nearly £150,000.

Alternative Disputes Resolution

Backto60, as the only organisation that campaigns for full restitution for the women, launched a plan to call for an Alternative Disputes Resolution, to negotiate a settlement with Mel Stride, the secretary of state for works and pensions, to end this long running dispute which has angered so many women who feel cheated by the DWP. This is backed by 54 MPs, petitions that have attracted 87,000 signatures and a Parliamentary motion.

Both the initiatives I suspect followed the leaking of the Ombudsman’s first and second stage reports on the issue on this blog. Without them becoming public the 3.6 million women affected would not have known the full and frankly paltry proposals by the Ombudsman to solve this dispute. And I have not forgotten senior people from Waspi pressing me to remove the posts so the reports would remain part of a private discussion between them, the Ombudsman and selected MPs rather than allowing the 3.6 million victims the opportunity to read them. And the second one is still not published.

The reason that I suspect WASPI turned is that it was becoming clear that the compensation would be meagre and limited – the DWP could decide ( as they have following other Ombudsman’s reports) that only the six complainants would automatically get compensation of £1000 and some 600 will have to fight for it .It looked a far cry from the promise by Waspi’s chief spokesman, Angela Madden at last year’s Labour conference of between £10,000 and £20,000 for everybody. That is still a lot less for many people owed up to £50,000.

Now developments have moved fast on this proposal. It is clear that WASPI, the Ombudsman and teams of lawyers from Bindman’s and Blackstone Chambers have come to a compromise which ended up in the high court last week. Reading the order from Judge Kirsty Brimelow it is clear that parts of the Ombudsman’s second stage report are quashed. These deal with the latter part of the report which rejected any financial compensation for women whose well being and life choices were affected by the delay and did not acknowledge the impact of the DWP pausing sending out letters to women.

The section was admitted by the Ombudsman to have been legally flawed by not taking everything into account.

Crowdfunder page

Since then WASPI have issued on their Crowdfunder page a series of ten conditions which ,it says, the Ombudsman should fulfill.

“WASPI will not be passively waiting for its outcome. At each stage we will be pressing the Ombudsman not only to complete his investigation in a way that is as rapid as possible but also thorough and fair. We will also be raising concerns about this with MPs, particularly those who sit on the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee (PACAC) which oversees the Ombudsman’s work. And we will turn to our lawyers for their expert input when responding to the Ombudsman’s draft reports and if we have concerns his investigation may be derailed again.”

The Ombudsman has been more cautious. He has agreed that he will show Waspi and the complainants his proposed changes and accept comments before finally presenting his report to Parliament.

A spokesperson committed them to looking at the report again adding” We don’t currently have a timeline, but we want to resolve the investigation as swiftly as possible, so any mechanism for remedy can be implemented for those affected.”

Now while this is happening Back to 60 pursued a different tack. The key issue for them has been the People’s Tribunal which looked into the plight of the 50swomen under the UN Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) Tribunal held last year and the judgement given by Judge Jocelynne Scutt which ruled that the women had suffered both maladministration and discrimination.

Some critics have tried to say the tribunal and the report are irrelevant because they have no standing. Given that the deputy chair of CEDAW in Geneva gave evidence to it and the judge was one of Australia’s first discrimination commissioners, such criticism seems rather ridiculous. to put it mildly.

The judge took a strong view that Parliament had a moral duty to this. “Government and Parliament have a responsibility to face up to and acknowledge the grave wrong done. There is no room for obfuscation or quibbling. Historic discrimination requires relief. There is a moral imperative to right this wrong. The law is on the side of 1950s women.”

Sir George Howarth, Labour MP for Knowsley, who chairs the Alternative Disputes Resolution project has already written to Mel Stride, asking to come to a meeting. The organisers have also invited Waspi who have not replied.

What is missing is what the DWP will do. It has registered as an interested party to the proceedings over the ombudsman’s report but did not send lawyers to the hearing last week.

Any question to ministers on these developments is met with the answer that it is ” neutral” and would not comment because of the legal proceedings.

This is not surprising , the DWP can’t commit to implementing the Ombudsman’s findings if it doesn’t know what they are. The proper procedure will be after the final report is published.

Will these initiatives work?

The stumbling block for Waspi is that the Ombudsman cannot compel the DWP to accept his findings – even if he does everything Waspi wants. This is one reason why legislation needs updating to strengthen his power which the government is reluctant to do.

The disputes procedure cannot get off the ground without the DWP agreeing to come either.

We could be left with a stalemate with the DWP playing one side against the other and sadly it will still mean women will not get the compensation they badly need. Difficult and confusing times lie ahead.

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Disciplined: The Adelaide train driver who said he locked disabled people on a train if they used the wrong carriage

Posted on April 1, 2023 by davidhencke

Our visit to Australia using a wheelchair to get around six big cities has been a heart warming experience. Visiting Darwin,Brisbane,Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth we found staff in museums and galleries and the Northern Territories Parliament extremely helpful. Pavements had dropped kerbs and public transport was disabled friendly with spaces for wheelchairs on trains.

Margaret on the Adelaide metro – trouble free on the way in – the problem came on the way back

It was therefore completely unexpected and out of character when we ran into trouble on the Adelaide metro system – not with the train but its driver.

Each four coach metro train has two carriages with spaces for wheelchairs. On the way back at Adelaide City station I put Margaret in the nearest carriage and as the platform was level with the train it was no problem. When we reached the terminus Outer Harbor where the QM2 was docked the train is higher than the platform so I expected the driver to put down a ramp.

“You have got in the wrong disabled carriage”

We saw him put a ramp down for a wheelchair in a carriage nearest his cab. And other passengers alerted him to our need. What happened next was unbelievable. He came up to us saying we had got in the wrong disabled carriage and he was not going to let us out.Instead he said he was going to lock us in and we would have to return to the City station – a 40 minute journey – and start again He said he did this to other disabled passengers if they broke the rules.

There followed a short stand off as I refused to take my finger off the button that kept the door open before he finally relented and said as we were visitors to Adelaide he would put a ramp down but we were not to do it again This took less than 5 minutes but he still complained that he had lost part of his meal break.

The situation was all the more worrying because we had only 20 minutes to board the boat and if he had sent us back we would be stranded in Adelaide.

Good ending

This has had a good ending. I decided to complain to the metro authority using their website It was easy to use and contained information so I could identify the exact train service. They promised to reply within ten days but replied in three thanking me for providing accurate information. Not only did I receive an apology for the distress but they said they had identified the driver and given him a talking to. They also said appropriate action had been taken against him.

This restored my faith in the way the authority handled the complaint and made us feel disabled people were respected there.

It was also good to see the authority taking the issue seriously and replying promptly. There were no quibbles and I hope the individual reflects on his egregious behaviour and no longer thinks he can treat disabled people in this uncaring and disrespectful way.

Vibrant Papua New Guinea contemporary art exhibition which slams and praises politicians tackling asylum seekers

Posted on March 9, 2023 by davidhencke

Captain Cook looks down on the Papua New Guinea people Painting by Mathias Kauage

Queensland’s Art Gallery is well known for its collection of Aboriginal art. But when we visited it on a day stop in Brisbane what attracted us was a special free exhibition of contemporary Papua New Guinea artists called Kin, reflecting the close relationships among the country’s painters.

It celebrated the work of Mathias Kauage and more recent painters and was a riot of vibrant colours and political messages touching on issues like refugees now right at the heart of debate in Britain. It included a remarkable painting of Captain Cook looking down on residents of Papua New Guinea – see above.

Detailed caption of two modern Papua New Guinea painters who have followed through from Mathias Kauage

A painting celebrating the former New Zealand Premier welcoming refugees

The paintings don’t shy away from tackling political issues particularly on the red hot issue in the UK and Australia on asylum seekers and refugees. A particular striking picture praises Jacinda Arden accepting and helping refugees.

One wonders how the painters would portray Suella Braverman and Rishi Sunak -both brown British politicians deporting largely brown and black asylum seekers from the shores of the UK. Perhaps the UK’s leading art gallery Tate Britain should commission them to paint a series to counteract the baleful influence of Right wing Aussie politician Tony Abbott on stirring up hate and resentment in this country.

Dramatic portrayal of the 2012 Australian general election struggle

Two other striking paintings by the group stand out. One is a painting of the Left v Right Australian general election where the combatants are portrayed as Aboriginal chiefs.

Another is of refugees kept in a holding camp in Papua New Guinea similar to the UK plan for one in France.

Australia’s harsh holding camp for migrants and asylum seekers

Two other striking exhibits in-the exhibition including a remarkable sculpture representing people literally getting under other peoples skins and an amazing collage by an Iranian born artist now living in America using decorative images used by Pakistani lorry drivers to beautify their vehicles .

a striking exhibit using different skins

The growing scandal of the multi billion pound payments owed to pensioners and claimants by the DWP

Posted on January 9, 2023 by davidhencke

Readers of my blog will be familiar with the scandalous story of the billions owed to 50s born women who both suffered maladministration and direct discrimination over the raising of the pension age from 60 to 66.

But what has emerged over the past year appears to show that this is part of a pattern where pensioners and disabled people are frankly swindled out of their money by the incompetence, maladministration and meanness of top management and politicians who run the Department for Work and Pensions.

Far from the 50swomen being an isolated case where mistakes were made those at the top of the DWP administration appear to have a playbook to deprive people of their rightful pensions and benefits, especially if they happen to be women. Nearly all the cases hit women much worse than men and as I have highlighted before – men have had privileges denied to women – such as the long running auto enrolment scheme that allowed men to have their national insurance contributions paid by the state from 60 to 65 while denying women any such privileges.

One of the worse cases which saved the state billions was a decision not to pay out extra pensions to people whose firms had contracted them out of Serps – an old style second pension- so they lost out of a Guaranteed Minimum Pension still payable in the public sector. A lot will have been women

The blog I wrote on this – despite being fiendishly complicated to explain- attracted over 15,000 hits – yet only two people got any compensation as the DWP made it difficult to claim.

Time to sign this petition

Christopher Thompson, a retired expert on this, has put up a petition to Parliament to protest about this and restore the indexation, but sadly only 311 people have signed. If everybody who read the blog signed it it would force the government to have to explain to Parliament why they did it. So please sign if you can.

Then there was the case of 237,000 pensioners – again a lot of them women – cheated out of £1.46 billion from their pensions – by miscalculations by the ministry raised by former pensions minister, Sir Steve Webb. The department is slowly trying reimburse them – some have decades of extra pension owed -but it will take at least to 2024 before it is completed.

Now Sir Steve has found another scandal which only affects women who should have received credits for looking after children from the late 70s. He has launched a campaign Mothers Missing Millions to try and get women’s pensions raised to make up the money – in one case a women was not credited with 14 years contributions.

And you have to add the scandal of the 118,000 disabled people put on a lower rather than benefit rate where the ministry has declined to compensate them – only giving money to the one person who complained to the Parliamentary Ombudsman. Even the Ombudsman has been silenced by the ministry who refuse to budge on this issue -leaving him appealling to MPs for help.

Time for an inquiry into the running of the DWP

What I am saying here is if you put all these cases together it is quite clear there is a pattern of underpayment and maladministration where the department do their best to avoid doing anything about it. It is without doubt discriminatory against women and suggests that ministers don’t want to pay them.

It is time women pressed all MPs to take up these issues. There is a strong case for an inquiry into the running of the DWP – there are too many cases for this to be just a coincidence.

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