WASPI women warn DWP 'you can't just walk away' in row over payouts

A WASPI campaigner has warned the government that the Department for Work and Pensions cannot "just walk away" following an Ombudsman report which found women deserve compensation over historic injustices and underpayments in the State Pension.

WASPI chair Angela Madden told the Daily Express newspaper of the ongoing wrangle with the DWP: "We’re going to put as much pressure as we can now to have this properly debated in Parliament. The Ombudsman put this before Parliament. They know that Parliament has to resolve it. It has to be all MPs speaking on behalf of all their constituents.

"There has to be a balance between today’s taxpayers and yesterday’s victims, but that goes for all the issues that the Government has to solve. They can’t just get it catastrophically wrong and walk away. We have MPs from all parties that are very supportive."

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On Wednesday, Ms Madden appeared in front of the Work and Pensions Committee hearing which took place after a report by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) was issued in March, asking the government to intervene over complaints around how changes were communicated.

Ms Madden told the committee: “An apology without a commitment to a fair remedy is not an apology at all, so I think that’s what we’d like to see from an apology.” She later added: “We’ve tried throughout the course of our campaign to communicate and manage the expectations of women.

“We have a large following on social media, we’ve got members, we’ve got a website. Our reach is probably hundreds and hundreds of thousands of women and they do expect compensation, but they expect that compensation to match the injustice that they’ve suffered.

“And I think if it does they’ll be satisfied, if it doesn’t then they won’t. So I think the level of compensation commensurate to the maladministration is a bit off and that needs to be considered further.”