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Rather late in the day the Department for Work and Pensions has requested personal documents from the six ” test case” complainants representing 3.5 million 50s born pensioners seeking compensation for maladministration.
This is the latest twist in the long running saga of the 50swomen fight for compensation which has taken seven years without a penny being paid out.
Having been contacted by some of the six women who are puzzled why the DWP should want such information and are not getting any adequate explanation from the DWP or the Ombudsman’s office. The request has come from the Parliamentary Ombudsman who is seeking their permission to hand over files that contain the personal information. The six are not supposed to confer with each other.
They have good reason to be puzzled. For the confidential submission to the Ombudsman from the DWP says the ministry has already decided to give them nothing. A section of their long submission addresses the problem that if it decided they should have some money why they don’t qualify for any financial redress. It goes through each case and tries to demolish the grounds under the partial maladministration found by the Ombudsman for the women to get anything. The documents it is seeking only apply to the partial maladministration found by the Ombudsman covering some 28 months Rob Behrens decided the ministry should have informed the women. So the Ombudsman will not pass to the DWP the full documentation from those who wanted the maladministration to cover the whole period after the 1995 Pensions Act was passed.
The confidential submission from the DWP does not accept that any of the six complainants are entitled to compensation. It rejects blanket payments to all saying ” we struggle to see how a uniform approach to the level of compensation has any validity when the individual situation of the complainants are all very different.”
It goes on to demolish claims of ill health, lack of money and financial loss are anything to do with the time the complainant received notice of the delay in their pension, blaming other factors for their distress.
It blames three of the complainants for not taking enough action to sort out their finances. It accuses two of them who said they would have kept working if they had known about the delay earlier, of failing to find jobs once they knew.
“It is very difficult to conclude that these complainants missed an opportunity to improve their financial situation because they did not take the action they claim they would have taken.”
It also rejects claims of ill health were caused by the delay in finding out that the pension age was going to rise.
“Four complainants described physical symptoms they attributed to their financial position. Several of the complainants were in difficult financial positions regardless of their not knowing about the increase to State Pension age.”
The final conclusion is: ”it is clear that the complainants simply needed to undertake more research in preparation for their retirement, especially considering that four of the sample group took early retirement and have not provided any evidence that they had conducted any research or retirement planning prior to making their decisions(Retirement years: 2010, 2006, 2005 & 2009). If they had requested a forecast and
planned, they would have had plenty of time to react instead of retiring.”
The report also includes a table which seems to suggest – before the Ombudsman made his provisional decision to make no awards for compensation but to leave it to Parliament- that the levels of compensation would be low- a maximum if £450 and in some cases nothing.
As for personal details the DWP submission already contains an annexe with a lot of personal details of the six complainants which makes it all the more confusing why it should want more. I am not publishing the details to protect their privacy.
It strikes me that people need to question more why this extra information is needed when the department has so much already.
It must be coincidence that this request has come at the same time as Mel Stride, the works and pensions secretary, is facing litigation from CEDAWinLAW, a campaigning group for women, calling for mediation with the DWP to end this long saga.
It is time the Parliamentary Ombudsman and the DWP were more open about their agenda rather than hiding behind obfuscation and secrecy. I seem to be the only person probing what is going on.
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UPDATE: Papers have now been served on Mel Stride, Secretary of State for work and pensions, and the DWP for acting unreasonably in refusing to agree to mediation over the issue of the six year delay to 1950s women’s pensions. The ministry will now have 21 days to file a response and then the case will have to go to court.
The Government’s attitude in not recognising there is a problem chimes well with their handling of the Post Office postmaster’s scandal and in delaying compensation for people hit by the contaminated blood scandal. Their attitude to my mind suggests there is a Whitehall playbook to avoid paying people any compensation for as long as possible, probably drawn up by Government lawyers, in the hope that many people will be dead before the inevitable pay out is made.
Since the publication of this blog the DWP has confirmed it is now involved in litigation with CEDAWinLAW but does not wish to comment about it.
But interestingly Rob Behrens, the Parliamentary Ombudsman, has pulled back from his threat to pause his investigation ( see below). He now says he will review the position only if the courts give permission to CEDAWinLAW to bring a judicial review. This means the confidential consultation will continue until January 19 and the report is still scheduled to be published on March 23.
The legal battle against Mel Stride, the work and pension secretary, over his refusal to consider mediation in the long running dispute over50s women pensions has begun.
Papers were lodged at the High Court yesterday by lawyers representing the campaigning group .CEDAWinLAW on behalf of 3.5 million people who faced a six year delay to receiving their pension.
In a statement the organisation said:
“CEDAWinLAW earlier instructed Professor John Cooper KC, ‘One of the Top 10 influential lawyers in the UK’, 25bedfordrow.com and David Greene, Senior Partner, edwincoe.com to represent ALL 1950’s Women in a judicial review against the Secretary of State for Work & Pensions in relation to the DWP’s refusal to mediate following from the Judge’s Report which sets out in depth the way in which those affected have enforceable rights which have been breached.
We are delighted to announce today that our legal team has issued at the court an Application for a Judicial Review in the matter which, in turn, is now being served on the Respondent.
Included as part of the lodged Application & Bundles, an expert witness statement authored by The Hon Dr Jocelynne Scutt AO, the former Australian judge, who produced a report on the discrimination faced by 50s women.
Please kindly donate to meet our legal team costs and @crowdjustice platform fees. The link is :https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/group-class-action/ “
The lodging of the papers will mean the Department for Work and Pensions will have to lodge a response to the new judicial review breaking their silence over the matter and their refusal to contemplate any mediation over the matter.
What the position of the Parliamentary Ombudsman, Robert Behrens, to this new development is not entirely clear. He is handling a separate case involving maladministration and is currently consulting in confidence over 500 people and the six complainants on his final report until January 19. His plan was to publish it on March 23 just a few days before his retirement. His main findings and the Department’s response to him were published on this blog here and here.
During a hearing with the Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee in November Mr Behrens in a reply to Ronnie Cowan, the Scottish National Party MP for Inverclyde, said:
“It is not in our hands, Mr Cowan, to be able to be definitive about what the end date is going to be. If there is further litigation, then that will delay the process even further. That is out of our
hands.”
It now is and his reaction and the DWP’s reaction to this new development is awaited.
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In what must be the most extraordinary provisional decision by any Parliamentary Ombudsman Rob Behrens has decided NOT to make any recommendations for compensation for maladministration he found affecting 3.5 million 50s born women who had to wait an extra six years for their pensions.
Some details of his confidential letter sent out to Waspi, MPs, the test case complainants and 500 other pensioners have leaked out and show basically the Ombudsman has , in my words.” kopped out ” of his job to compensate people wronged by public bodies. This is after spending six years – with various breaks – investigating the issue.
The letter reveals that the Department for Work and Pensions has put enormous pressure on the Ombudsman not to award anything by telling him before he has completed his final report they have no intention of paying it.
These are the key paragraphs:
The official Ombudsman website says the aim is to publish this as a final report in March.
So what are the repercussions if this goes ahead? It obviously means it would go to Parliament which would have to have a debate and a vote on various levels of compensation. But the Parliamentary agenda is largely in the hands of the government and government whips. The government still has a large majority and Rishi Sunak, the PM, has shown little, if any, interest in this issue. All the government has to do is put down a motion saying the DWP doesn’t want to pay any of the women and whip Tory MPs to vote for it.
There might be a small rebellion by Tories but not enough to defeat it. It is by no means certain that Labour would support it, despite the former shadow chancellor, John McDonnell promising £58 billion to settle this issue. Labour seeing itself in power later next year would not necessarily be keen on paying a multi billion package to the women when faced with a tight spending constraints.
The other extraordinary result of such a provisional decision is that this is a bitter blow to Waspi, who went down the Parliamentary Ombudsman route. The have raised huge sums of money from these women – all it turns out for nothing. They are still running a crowd funder – supposedly for a judicial review into the Ombudsman’s decision. They capitulated at the court door- going for the Ombudsman to rewrite his findings. Well he has now, and recommends they get nothing. Should they continue to raise money now it could be seen as fleecing their supporters as they now have nowhere to go.
The only bright light in this terrible situation is that CEDAWinLAW has now raised all the £15,000 it needs for lawyers to go ahead to work out a strategy to bring a Group Class action against the DWP. Since it looks like the only thing that could make the DWP listen is a court decision, this is the only avenue left.
But there is something worse in the Ombudsman’s provisional decision. Should it go to a vote in Parliament and Parliament votes to give them nothing, that is the end of the matter. Parliament is supreme and even the courts have to bow to Parliament. In other words, the Ombudsman’s decision, however he likes to dress it up, condemns 3.5 million mainly poor pensioners to go to their graves without a penny in compensation. Some friend of the oppressed indeed.
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CEDAWinLaw, the successor body to BackTo60, announced today that it has started preparations to take the Department for Work and Pensions to court again.
The move will re-ignite the row over the long drawn out dispute over the failure by government to compensate or recognise the plight of 3.5 million women who had to wait an extra six years for their pension. At present progress on the dispute is stymied by the long time the Parliamentary Ombudsman is taking to decide how much compensation the women are entitled to and the scope of their complaints.
Mel Stride, the work and pensions secretary, and Laura Trott, the pensions minister have also blocked any discussion of mediation between CEDAWinLAW and the government hiding behind Robert Behrens, the Parliamentary Ombudsman’s protracted delay in reaching any decision on the issue. This particular claim by ministers is vigorously contested by Jocelynne Scutt, the Australian judge, who says both processes are separate and mediation is possible while the Ombudsman considers his report
In a statement today CEDAWinLAW said: “CEDAWinLAW has instructed John Cooper KC ‘Top Silk’ out of 25bedfordrow.com via David Greene, Senior Partner, edwincoe.com to represent all 1950’s Women in a Group Class Action against the Secretary of State for Work & Pensions out of The Judge’s Report which sets out in depth the way in which those affected have enforceable rights which have been breached.
We plan to initially raise £15,000 to determine a case strategy with Counsel to be published, in due course.”
John Cooper is one of the leading human rights lawyers, having been the lead prosecutor in the People’s Iran Tribunal in The Hague; a leading KC in the Manchester Arena bombings inquiry, numerous high profile murder trials and fraud cases and is described as the preferred KC for cases which challenge the Establishment.
He said today: “This is an important challenge for so many women in this country. The weight of the evidence indicates a grave injustice to them and we will robustly represent their interests as we move forward with the assistance of a first class legal team”
David Greene is regarded as an expert in bringing Class Actions for groups and cited as one of the best litigators in the City. He is a past President of the Law Society which represents solicitors.
The announcement today was made inevitable by Mel Stride, the works and pensions secretary, refusing any mediation talks. These had been offered by Garden Court Chambers and ministers initially decided to ignore the request only to find themselves under pressure by Garden Court Chambers to have to respond. as it is a recognised legal process. Once he had refused he opened himself up to potential legal action. The offer for mediation still stands.
The decision today is also a victory for CEDAWinLAW, whose predecessor BackTo60, were refused a hearing of their judicial review by the Supreme Court after initially winning a case to bring it in the lower courts.
By doggedly pursuing the issue despite this setback they got Jocelynne Scutt, former anti discrimination commissioner in Tasmania and an Australian judge, to hold a people’s tribunal, assisted by Garden Court Chambers. Her findings produced in a report found that 50swomen had been the subject of direct discrimination contrary to international law under the UN Convention of the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women and Girls, ratified by Margaret Thatcher in 1986.
Despite attempts to pretend this was of no significance notably by Andrew Gwynne, MP who supports WASPI and is now a Labour shadow minister for social care, as just ” a personal view”, lawyers from three firms, Garden Court Chambers ( for mediation) ,25 Bedford Row, and Edwin Coe (for the class action) have decided that it presents an arguable case.
CEDAWinLAW is seeking to raise £15,000 to cover the development of a legal case strategy . Their website if you want to donate is here.
A decision to go back to the courts will present fresh problems for the DWP which thought it had seen the end of legal action after the judicial review was blocked by the Supreme Court. It could also present problems for the Ombudsman’s Office as Robert Behrens used the previous legal action to pause his investigation.
I have asked both to comment. The Parliamentary Ombudsman’s Office said “as far as we are aware no legal proceedings have been issued so no implications for our investigation.”
“
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The CEDAWinLaw organisation, which backs full implementation of the UN Convention for ending all discrimination against women and girls, has put up links to the interviews this week on Salford City Radio’s Ian Rothwell show. These reveal the latest move towards getting mediation for the 50s women who faced a six year extra wait to get their pensions.
Mel Stride, the work and pensions secretary has refused any mediation so tougher action is being considered and legal advice has been sought. The link to the website is here.
Worth watching developments over the next coming weeks. Doesn’t look like anyone is going away. Meanwhile the number of 50swomen who have died without getting any compensation has reached over 300,000.
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It is well worth watching the above video interview with Dr Jocelynne Scutt which explains clearly and concisely the current impasse over resolving the dispute between 3.5 million 1950s born women and the government over the six year delay in getting their pensions.
She provides both a clear explanation of why an Alternative Dispute Resolution is the only way to solve the impasse and why the Ombudsman’s current draft report – now being rewritten – only provides a partial solution to the problem by concentrating solely on the delay caused by maladministration and not on the direct discrimination against the women themselves under the UN Convention on the Elimination of all Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). The latter is crucial because Mrs Thatcher signed up and ratified this convention in 1986 and the UK is responsible to the UN in Geneva to follow its provisions.
As Dr Scutt argues ” the law is the law”.
Her explanation comes as the pension minister, Laura Trott, has muddied the waters saying that the offer of mediation by the internationally respected law firm Garden Court Chambers, cannot be taken up at the moment by Mel Stride, the works and pension secretary, because the Parliamentary Ombudsman is still working on his report.
Laura Trott is wrong. Mediation can go ahead while the Parliamentary Ombudsman is still investigating as it is an entirely separate from whatever the Ombudsman recommends. Indeed it might save Rob Behrens a lot of work as he is obviously struggling to put together a fresh report and would probably love to drop this hot potato.
The reason why Laura Trott is offering these lame excuses and why there is silence from Mel Stride, I suspect, is that Garden Court has started a legal process by writing now twice to the Secretary of State and offering to act as impartial mediators to end this dispute. Their reputation as impartial mediators is second to none.
He is trying to avoid replying because if he says yes – it will automatically go ahead. But if he says no, his lawyers at the Department for Work and Pensions have probably warned him he risks the whole matter going back to the courts. If that happens what sensible judge is not going to think the Secretary of State is being obstructive. To borrow Cabinet colleague Michael Gove’s words on another matter, he will be portrayed as “a blocker not a builder.”
The dilemma both the government and Parliamentary Ombudsman are facing is what is the position of the UK under CEDAW. If Dr Scutt’s cogent judgement is correct,, they just can’t ignore the implications of direct discrimination for this particular group of people. It is the ” elephant in the room.”
I am grateful to the Waspi Pembrokeshire branch for tweeting about the recent meeting between the Parliamentary Ombudsman and Waspi which ended in a stalemate despite them sending in two lawyers to help argue their case. The Ombudsman could give no publication date when this so called ” urgent” issue could be resolved and talked of completely rewriting the second part of its report because of the issues ” Waspi and others ” had raised.
I suspect the “others” refers to Dr Scutt’s judgement as I know CEDAWinLaw has sent her judgement to the Parliamentary Ombudsman’s chief executive, Rebecca Hilsenrath, and I can’t see how the Ombudsman can produce a report without referring to it. Mrs Hilsenrath has also agreed to meet CEDAWinLAW on a date yet to be agreed.
Again I advise everybody to watch the interview for a clear understanding of the present position taken by CEDAWinLAW as everyone awaits events.
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Former judge Jocelynne Scutt today published her full report on the plight of 1950s women who have waited up to six years to get their delayed pension. As expected it provides copious arguments why the women have been cheated, why the 50swomen were the first group targeted and contains some heart rending cases. You can download the report here. It is a large file as the report runs to 155 pages including appendices.
Here is the entire speech by Jocelynne Scutt to MPs in Parliament this week. This explains the logic of her argument.
Some 3.8 million women suffered direct discrimination by the Tory government’s decision in 1995 to raise the pension age, of women to 65 and then 66, MPs and peers will be told at a briefing in Parliament today.
This is the main finding of a big report by Jocelynne Scutt, a former Australian judge who served on the Fiji bench and was Tasmania’s first Anti Discrimination Commissioner. She now teaches law at the University of Buckingham and is a member of both the Australian Labor Party and the British Labour Party and is a Labour councillor in Cambridge.
Her report followed a hearing by the CEDAWinLAW People’s Tribunal last July which specifically looked into the plight of 50sborn women where some of the women and Dr Elgun Safarov, vice chair of the UN Convention for the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women and girls (CEDAW) from Geneva, gave evidence. The UN committee is currently challenging the UK government to explain its failure to write the convention into UK law some 36 years after Margaret Thatcher ratified it.
The ruling in the report to be published in due course is much tougher than the case put forward by two members of BackTo60 in the court hearings following the judicial review. Then lawyers argued that the women had suffered indirect discrimination as their opportunities to pay contributions into the National Insurance fund, among other issues, to qualify for a full pension were not equal with men.
Jocelynne Scutt argues that this was not indirect discrimination but direct discrimination of a specific group of women who had been singled out to wait for their pension while everyone else was unaffected. It has also to be taken into account that 9.8 million men over 60 who decided not to claim unemployment benefit were given free auto-credits which ensured that nearly all got a full pension for life. It was going to be offered to women until 2018 but that idea was swiftly scrapped.
Every one of these women – many who have worked since the age of 15 as well as bringing up a family- was promised by the government when they started work that they could retire at 60 and planned to do so. And given the Department for Work and Pensions told the courts that it was not obliged under the 1995 Act to tell them personally this had changed – this only came in when men were affected by a rise in their retirement age.
Jocelynne Scutt has already delivered the report to Rishi Sunak at Downing Street. She argues that 50s women were treated unfavourably from the start. The 1995 decision did not affect any women born in the 1940s, targeted the 1950s women while those born in 1960s and 1970s onwards had much longer to adjust. The Parliamentary Ombudsman’s report agrees there was partial maladministration in that 50s women were not properly informed. In fact hardly anyone was properly informed until it all changed with men and women facing a rise in their pension age to 66.
Jocelynne Scutt says “Government and Parliament have a responsibility to face up to and acknowledge the grave wrong done. There is no room for obfuscation or quibbling. Historical discrimination requires relief. There is a moral imperative to right this wrong. The law is on the side of the 1950s-born women. 1950sborn women alone are the group targeted. This is a debt of law and honour. Full restitution is the only proper legal, ethical and moral outcome. Full restitution must be honoured.“
The briefing is in the House of Commons at 2.0pm today.
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Earlier this month I gave evidence to a tribunal set up by CEDAW in LAW presided over by Australian judge Jocelynne Scutt on the situation affecting 3.8 million women who have had to wait an extra six years to get their pension.
My evidence tries to explain how this situation came about going back to 1988 when the government decided to end Treasury contributions (except when the fund was in the red) to the National Insurance Fund starving it of money to pay out pensions. Given pensions are paid out of current contributions the fund would have built up a very healthy surplus – enough for both higher pensions for everybody later and avoided the current raising of the pension age. Given the UK has one of the lowest state pensions in Europe this would have been a very good improvement.
My evidence also showed how successive governments failed to properly tell the women affected how they would lose their pensions for five and later six years under the 1995, 2008 and 2011 Pensions Acts.
And it reveals how men were treated differently after Margaret Thatcher in 1983 decided to pay the national insurance contributions for men from 60 to 65 to keep them from claiming unemployment benefits. This lasted until 2018 and was available for 9.8 million men. Women born in the 1950s were promised this from 2010 but it was never implemented.
Also I strongly criticise the failure to remedy this in both the courts and through the Parliamentary Ombudsman. The Supreme Court would not hear the case and Robert Behrens, the Parliamentary Ombudsman, has given half hearted support to maladministration claims for part of the period. On top of that the All Party Parliamentary Group on state pension inequality has been ineffective, relying on the Ombudsman to present the women’s case rather than directly intervening as MPs to pressurise the government.
The tribunal also heard from a number of women who described the devastating effect this wait had on their lives and from Elgun Safarov, the vice chairperson of the United Nations Convention of the Elimination of All Discrimination Against Women Committee.
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The short snippet above from Unison delegate Lianne Dallimore is the moment the 1.3 million member Unison trade union came out in favour of backing implementing the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Discrimination Against Women into UK law.
This is a very important move as the union will be the first big organisation to endorse a policy that will require women to get equal pay, equal rights to pensions, rights to child care fast and finally put an end to the painfully slow progress there has been to grant women equal rights to men.
Unison is one of the largest trade unions in the UK It has a woman general secretary, Christina McAnea and women outnumber men as members by a huge majority. There are over one million women members to 300,000 men. Most of its members are among the lowest paid in the country whether they are teaching assistants,, dinner ladies, low paid NHS staff or local authority workers.
Unison is also an influential union in the Labour movement and in the Labour Party. So its delegates decision to endorse such a policy will now mean the national executive committee will have to decide whether to back it. If it does the Shadow Cabinet will have to sit up and take notice – and it will put pressure on Labour to include a promise to do so in their next party manifesto. Angela Rayner, the deputy party leader, has previously backed implementing Cedaw.
The full motion read;
Conference we call on the National Executive Council to:
1) Work with National Labour Link and the national women’s committee to develop a comprehensive campaign for the implementation of CEDAW into domestic legislation;
2) Work with Learning and Organising Services (LAOS) on developing a training and awareness package on CEDAW for activists and members;
3) Report back to National Delegates Conference 2023 on progress made.
North Cumbria Northumberland, Tyne and Wear Health
It also comes at an opportune moment as Boris Johnson’s government is under fire from the United Nations for taking far too long to implement a convention that Margaret Thatcher signed up to in 1986.
The Labour Party went part of the way introducing the Equality Act, which became law in 2010 – but it is still a half hearted piece of legislation – more bark than bite. Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish first minister, has gone further by including in her last manifesto a promise of legislation implementing it in full.
But she is up against Boris Johnson – who shows not the slightest interest in this issue – and has blocked at the Supreme Court any chance of Scotland introducing a parallel law implementing the UN convention on the rights of the child, which the UK has also ratified but not properly implemented.
The decision by Unison at its delegate conference, which endorses a report prepared by Dr Jocelynne Scutt, President of the Cedaw Tribunal, that calls for sweeping reforms to radically change the position of women in society – from immediate equal pay to ending the long running sore that has bedevilled 3.8 million women born in the 1950s who had to wait six years to get their pensions and were never properly informed by the change.
Last year the CEDAW People’s Tribunal was held. his was a ground breaking tribunal backed by Garden Court Chambers where academics, activists and women’s rights experts produced a wide range of evidence-based policies to end women’s discrimination.
The union’s backing is an important development for CEDAWinLAW which I am a patron, to get this issue on the agenda.
Last year some detractors, sadly a number of them professional women, tried to rubbish the CEDAW People’s Tribunal as though the whole hearing was a waste of time and space. They would rather keep women in their place than fight for change.
Next month CEDAWinLAW will hold another tribunal to specifically look again at the issue of 50s women and their loss of a pension and how it happened.
In the meantime the action by Unison delegates will only spur women who want change now – not dragged out for decades – to continue the fight.
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