The government has denied once again requests to help women affected by an increase in the state pension age, saying assistance would be unaffordable and cannot be justified.
Guy Opperman, minister for pensions and financial inclusion, argued yesterday (8 February) in Parliament that "any further transitional arrangements would come at great costs".
He said: "The government has considered many options, and all of the proposals had substantial legal problems, as well as financial."
The Women Against State Pension Inequality (Waspi) movement claimed while the 1995 Conservative government's Pensions Act included plans to increase the women's state pension age to 65 – the same as men's – the changes were implemented unfairly, with little or no personal notice.
The group also claimed the changes were implemented faster than promised with the 2011 Pension Act and left women with no time to make alternative plans, leading to devastating consequences.
Mr Opperman said: "The only alternative is to ask the working generation to pay an even larger share of their income to support pensioners. I believe successive governments have made appropriate but difficult decisions to equalise and increase the state pension age.
"To renege on our decisions, and to further increase costs to the working population, would be unfair and unaffordable."
Several solutions have been brought forward by opposition parties, such as the ones proposed by Stephen Lloyd, MP for Eastbourne and Willingdon, and frontbench spokesman on work and pensions.
In January, he said the most practical way of solving this issue would be for the Department for Work & Pensions (DWP) "to make a sizeable transition payment to each of the affected women to the tune of £15,000 payable immediately, tax-free".
This is not the first solution proposed by Mr Lloyd, who in December called for the government to abandon its plan to cut corporation tax to 17 per cent by 2020 and use that money to help the Waspi women.
Mr Opperman addressed some of the proposed solutions.
He said: "Going as far as some campaigners have urged, and revoking the 1995 act, would represent a loss of £70bn for the public purse.”
According to the minister, this is one of the proposals of Labour MPs.
He said: "In addition, they have proposed in their manifesto to maintain the pension age at 66, which would cost over £250bn more than the government's referred timetable by 2045 to 2046.
"Payments on this scale are simply unaffordable and cannot be justified."
According to Tom Selby, senior analyst at AJ Bell, "it seems clear the Waspi campaign's only hope for salvation now rests on Jeremy Corbyn becoming the next prime minister".
He said: "Labour's manifesto pledges to extend pension credit to the most vulnerable women affected by the changes and explore transitional options.
"While it remains unclear what these transitional arrangements might look like, it seems unlikely they will meet the Waspi demand of a 'bridging pension' until state pension age."
Mr Selby also added that the Work and Pensions committee's proposal that those women affected should be able to access the state pension early and at a lower rate "merits serious consideration", "but it seems a government mired in Brexit wrangling is unwilling to consider even this relatively modest, cost neutral change at the moment".
He said: "Despite this latest blow, recent history suggests the Waspi campaign will continue to make noise and rattle cages in Westminster."
Waspi was the subject of a debate in December in the House of Commons, when Mr Opperman said that providing full transitional state pension arrangements to women born in the 1950s would potentially increase inequality.
The petition which originated the debate was launched by Labour MP Grahame Morris and had very similar terms to the first request launched by Waspi and discussed in Parliament back in 2016.
He said: "We are creating an unnecessary generation of women many of them relying on food banks, some of whom forced to sell their homes and forced to rely on the benefits system. This is degrading for them."
In November, it was revealed that the Parliamentary and Health Services Ombudsman has intervened to speed up responses to complaints from Waspi against the DWP, regarding what they call an inadequate communication of changes to the state pension age.
maria.espadinha@ft.com
