Women Against State Pension Inequality has received the go-ahead for a hearing in the High Court after filing a claim for judicial review. Last Thursday, Waspi said the High Court judges have determined that their case is arguable and “ought to be considered at a final hearing”.  

A High Court judge will decide if the Department for Work and Pensions will have to reconsider its decision not to pay compensation of between £1,000 and £2,950 each for maladministration to 1950s-born women, as recommended by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman. It is the latest development in Waspi's long-running fight over the government’s refusal to compensate about 3.6m women who were told too late that their state pension age was going up.  

If the court orders the DWP to reconsider its refusal, the government could still come to the same conclusion as it did in December last year. At the time, work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall justified the rejection saying that most women knew about the increase, that earlier communication would not have changed the outcome and compensation worth up to £10.5bn would not be fair on taxpayers.

A DWP spokesperson said: "We do not comment on live litigation. We have apologised for there being a 28-month delay in writing to 1950s-born women. However, we do not agree with the Ombudsman’s approach to injustice or remedy and that is why we have decided not to pay compensation."

     

   

The judicial review that has now been granted follows a letter before action to the DWP in February, with the DWP responding on 10 March. The campaigners have raised about £211,700 and aim to reach £230,000 within two weeks. They have applied for a cost-capping order, which will be decided after an interim hearing.  

“The outcome of this interim hearing will be critical to whether we can take our claim all the way without the risk of paying unlimited and unknown costs to the government if we don’t win,” the campaigners said.  

They claimed that the DWP has refused four times to come to a cost capping agreement, without which the group may need to withdraw the case. 

 

Waspi chair Angela Madden said that “with the millions of pounds in the DWP’s pocket to spend on lawyers, the government seems to think they can avoid humiliation by refusing a Costs Capping Order and scaring us away”. 

     

Any negative news relating to pensioners could add to the pressure the government is under to appease older voters as well as its own MPs. Today, it has announced its U-turn on the policy of means-testing winter fuel payments, after the Reform party gained significant ground at local elections over the issue. Waspi claimed that 179 MPs have publicly criticised the decision not to compensate 1950s-born women. 
   

   

Before the general election of 2024, some Labour MPs, including senior cabinet ministers and the PM, gave the impression they would provide compensation for 1950s-born women if elected to power.  
   

Compensation was recommended because the PHSO found that DWP letters communicating women's state pension age increase should have been sent 28 months earlier than they were. Some women say they gave up work or reduced their hours in the belief they could retire at age 60, experiencing financial hardship when they had to wait longer for their state pension than they had expected.   

Waspi in 2023 crowdfunded for a judicial review of PHSO’s findings in the second of its three reports - in which PHSO said not all the injustices claimed resulted from the state pension increase - based on some of PHSO's assumptions. The claim led to a settlement with the ombudsman. PHSO then revised its findings, with knock-on effects on the third report about whether women should receive some compensation. The ombudsman has ruled out full reinstatement of pensions from age 60 for affected women as the High Court already decided against this five years ago, in a case brought by campaign group Backto60. 
   

    

Women's state pension age – which in 1940 had been lowered from 65 to 60 – was to gradually increase back to 65 over 10 years from 2010, according to the Pensions Act 1995. With the Pensions Act 2011, this timetable was accelerated so that women’s state pension age reached 65 by November 2018, instead of April 2020.   

Separately, legislation from 2007 means the state pension age for both men and women is set to rise to 68 by 2046.

This article has been updated to include comment by the DWP.