Government decision on 50swomen promised by the end of February next year

Posted on December 5, 2025 by davidhencke

UPDATE: Following publication of this post one issue has been raised by John Halford, Waspi’s lawyer from Bindman’s. He says it is not true that originally you needed permission for both parties or would have to pay £300 to attend the case management hearing. I have checked this back and staff at the administrative court did advise people to do this and told people If no agreement then you need to complete N244 Application form at a cost of £300 to register. This was overruled by the judge on December 2 who made it an open hearing. I passed this back to Mr Halford only to find he had blocked me sending a reply. What extraordinary behaviour from a lawyer.

A long awaited decision on the six year battle for redress for the 3.6 million remaining 50s women has been promised by the Department for Work and Pensions by the end of February next year – as part of a deal agreed between the ministry and Waspi Ltd.

Under the deal Waspi has dropped its judicial review claim due to be heard next week and accepted an offer by the DWP to pay the Waspi company £180,000 towards its legal costs in bringing the claim.

Most of the manoeuvring to obtain this arrangement has been behind the scenes in meetings between lawyers on both sides. As a result there will be no public hearing in the courts of the arguments where both sides would have put their case under the watchful eye of the Parliamentary Ombudsman who was an interested party. Waspi had been challenging Pat McFadden, the DWP secretary of state, over his decision not to award any compensation following the Parliamentary Ombudsman’s findings of partial maladministration over the communications informing the women.

05/07/2024. London, United Kingdom.Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Pat McFadden, poses for a photograph following his appointment to Cabinet by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer in 10 Downing Street. Picture by Lauren Hurley / No 10 Downing Street

Then rather dramatically Mr McFadden on November 11 change his mind after the discovery of an earlier document which had been overlooked for 18 years revealing that attempts to inform the women had failed. Waspi’s lawyers Bindmans are said to have found it -presumably in the exchange of documents before the hearing. See my coverage of the document on this site here.

Before the hearing was dropped Waspi and DWP had the DWP arranged a case management hearing on December 3 with the most extraordinary terms allowing either side to block who would be allowed to attend or have to pay over £300 to obtain the right to attend.

This amounted to secret justice and it is no wonder on the day before the hearing the judge, Mr Justice Swift put out a national statement giving his directions for the case which made it clear it was a public hearing that anybody could attend and there were arrangements for people to hear it remotely.

This scotched the plan for a semi secret hearing so that evening it is clear that lawyers from both sides must have met and agreed to abandon the hearing the next day and Waspi Ltd agreed to pull out alongside the DWP from the two day judicial review.

It is my speculation that it will mean that some arrangement has been agreed under ” a nod and a wink” that the ministry will offer some form of compensation to some of the women. Certainly a seasoned lawyer like John Halford at Bindman’s ,would not have agreed to this without some hint or his client ,Waspi, would have been left in a very precarious position.

Waspi has not been alone in making representations to the government. Enter Edward Romain, a former whistleblower who has set up Blind Justice, a community interest company, to take up injustice cases and has joined joined forces with Cedaw in Law, to fight the case for the women on both discrimination and maladministration. I covered his case against Glyndebourne in an earlier article here. The case is now settled but it also discloses some strange behaviour by lawyers.His website is blindjustice.org.uk .

The day before the planned case review he delivered a recorded letter to Sir Keir Starmer and copied to Pat McFadden staking CedawinLaw’s claim to participate in any mediation process.

He followed this up with a powerful letter to Mr Oliver Towle, a senior lawyer at the Litigation Directorate for the DWP with a copy to the Treasury solicitor.

The letter asks the lawyer to confirm that following the court order that CEDAWinLAW and all other materially affected groups will be included in the consultations from the outset and clarifications of the intended structure and timeline for stakeholder engagement. The letter states

CEDAWinLAW represents the interests of 3.5 million women affected by State Pension Age changes.
The organization has made formal legal submissions and engaged with public authorities over four years.
It has pursued mediation and presented evidence to Parliament, highlighting ongoing advocacy efforts.

It also cites legal precedents quoting past cases covering natural justice, legitimate expectations, Wednesbury unreasonableness ( ie irrational responses), civil procedure rules and international law.

It concludes:”We respectfully submit that any reconsideration that does not include CEDAWinLAW would be procedurally flawed and open to future challenge. We remain available to assist constructively and can provide additional documentation or legal submissions if required.
We look forward to your confirmation and to contributing meaningfully to the reconsideration process.”

One curious fact, actions by WASPI and CedawinLaw appear to have come to attention of the Chinese government over the last five months.Altogether I have received over 76,000 hits from China from Beijing and 40 other cities across China data scraping my blogs on the pensions issue.

China has one of the lowest retirement ages in the world. Women can retire at 50, men at 60. I wondering whether the Government is thinking of raising it and is looking at the opposition to it in the UK. President Putin tried to raise the pension age for women some time ago but had such opposition from the Babuskas that he backed down -probably the only reversal he made as President.

The full letter to the government lawyer can be read here.

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Exclusive: 50s women: Details revealed of the damning buried DWP report that derailed Pat McFadden

Posted on November 13, 2025 by davidhencke

Pat McFadden, poses for a photograph following his appointment to Cabinet by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer in 10 Downing Street. Picture by Lauren Hurley / No 10 Downing Street

The 18 year old research report that derailed work and pension secretary Pat Mc Fadden and forced him to review his decision to pay nothing in compensation to 3.6 million 50s born women is a comprehensive and damning document. No wonder he didn’t go into details in his Parliamentary statement this week on what the Labour government then did not do to inform the women and the first cohort of men who faced a rise in the pension age.

The key finding by researchers on the exercise of sending 16 million letters with automatic pension forecasts was that it was a “ systematic failure to reach the target populations most in need of provision.”

The research is very thorough. It took over a year to do it. It involved covering 16 million letters. Researchers interviewed 11,690 people. It involved both the women in the target 50-59 age group and men aged 59-64. ( 2007 was the year it was revealed that both men and women faced the pension age going up to 66). But it also involved men and women aged 20-49 to see if they were aware of the pension changes.

The first fact discovered was that out of the 16 million letters sent out, staggeringly 11 million went unread.

The report said The APF ( automatic pension forecast) was least effective among those who most needed it:

Those with no pension knowledge: 16% readership
Those without pension provision: 25% readership
Younger people: 20-24% readership
Lower socioeconomic groups: 30% readership

This represents a systematic failure to reach the target populations most in need of intervention.

All the letters did was reinforce people better off people’s decision to take early action to safeguard themselves.

It said This suggests the APF largely reached people who would have acted anyway, providing little marginal benefit.

There was also a Self-Selection Bias.

Those who read the APF were systematically different:

64% already had basic/good pension knowledge
33% already had pension provision
Higher income and socioeconomic status

The APF appears to have reinforced existing advantages rather than closing gaps.

It concluded:” “This research provides rigorous evidence that mass information provision, while well-intentioned, has minimal impact on pension knowledge or retirement planning behaviour. The APF initiative reached 16 million people but meaningfully engaged only about 5 million, with measurable behavioural impact likely affecting fewer than 1-2 million.

It lays down three fundamental truths.

Information Is Not Enough Knowledge deficits are not the primary barrier to retirement planning. The research shows that those with the greatest information needs were least likely to engage with information provided.
Existing Advantages Compound The APF was most effective among those who already had pension knowledge, existing provision, higher incomes, and greater financial capability—reinforcing rather than reducing pension inequality.
Behaviour Change Requires Architecture, Not Just Information The minimal difference between APF and control groups demonstrates that passive information provision cannot drive behaviour change for complex, long-term decisions like retirement plan.

The report did tell ministers what they should do and why it was needed – that included specifically targeting the groups who did not respond in the future and running a systematic campaign to raise awareness of the change. As the Parliamentary Ombudsman found the result was maladministration.

DWP in ministerial flux

The ministry at the time was in flux. The year 2007 saw Peter Hain replaced by John Hutton – now both peers – as work and pension secretaries. The minister responsible for pensions changed as well from Mike O’Brien ( long left Parliament and working as a lawyer) and Dame Rosie Winterton.

There was zilch coverage in the media about its findings – the Iraq War was raging at the time – and it is not clear whether the report was kept for internal use anyway.

What will the impact be? First Pat McFadden says the review would not necessarily lead to the government paying out compensation. Secondly it could affect the judicial review brought by WASPI on the failure to act on the Parliamentary Ombudsman’s report and pay out compensation, as he said he had informed the high court about his decision to review the issue.

This could torpedo the hearing due on December 9 because judges may not want to hear the case if the minister says he is reviewing the situation.

As I have stated many times this would not have happened as CedawinLaw , the other main group campaigning for restitution for women, has said if they had applied instead for mediation and a court ruling to enforce it. But sadly WASPI has always refused to work with other groups wanting to create an impression in the media that they are the only people concerned about the issue.

Also the issue of past discrimination against these women as well as maladministration could have been included in the case. But Waspi do not seem to be bothered about this.

Not so transparent McFadden

There is one other issue to raise. Pat McFadden made a big issue of being transparent in his statement. But in fact he made it difficult for journalists to access this report. Normally when a minister makes a statement – and it will the case in the Budget – all the papers are available in the Vote Office to lobby journalists. In this case this paper was only available in the House of Commons library which can only be accessed by MPs. I would like to thank the anonymous MP who got me a copy.

Since then the library have allowed the report to be available to the public. The link is here.