WASPI payouts 'could be higher than recommended' after 'low' initial amount

WASPI payouts from DWP could be even higher than the Ombudsman report recommended, it has been reported. A committee of MPs sat down this week for the Work and Pensions Committee after a report by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) was issued in March.

The PSHO asked Parliament to intervene over complaints around how DWP state pension changes were communicated. WASPI chair Angela Madden told the Daily Express on Thursday : "There are women that we know have lost out financially. We think a lot of women have suffered direct financial loss. If like me you’d given up a full time job to look after a frail parent or someone else, that feels like a financial loss, that feels like a huge financial decision."

She went on: "We know so much of the evidence. This is why so many of the MPs are on our side as well, because their constituents have been writing to them for a few years now. There are probably on average 6,000 WASPI women in each constituency. So the MPs have heard all the stories that we have heard as well.

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"This is why the All Party Parliamentary Group recommended a solution at Level 6 of the Ombudsman’s scale." Ms Madden told the committee: “We are pleased with the report, it’s identified that there was maladministration: big tick for us. It’s identified that there should be compensation: big tick for us.

“It’s also laid the report before Parliament, which we’re really happy with because we feel that Parliament is the right place for that decision to be made. The level suggested in the report, we think is on the low side.”

Rebecca Hilsenrath, interim ombudsman at the PHSO, told the Work and Pensions Committee during a later session on Tuesday: “I do recognise the impacts on so many individuals and I recognise that the Waspi women would have liked a higher level of compensation.”

But standing by the original recommendation, she added: “We feel that the level four general description of what the impact looked like for individual women was right. And we also looked at the case examples cited both in relation to level four and also to the higher levels. And we felt that those indicated to us quite clearly that they were level four cases.”