Starmer’s Waspi betrayal will come back and sting him

W hat exactly is going on with this Labour government? It’s like they have decided to set out to piss off as many pensioners as they can in the shortest amount of time. If that’s what they’re doing, then they are certainly one of the most successful governments in modern history. Perhaps they’re hoping all the pensioners will be dead by the time of the next election, they certainly seem to be doing their utmost to kill them off.

After campaigning on a promise to reduce fuel bills during this summer’s Westminster general election campaign, one of the first acts of Starmer’s new Labour government was to axe the universal winter fuel allowance for pensioners and restrict it to those in receipt of pension credit, an effective fuel bill hike of £200 for most pensioners.

Not content with letting pensioners freeze in the dark this winter, now Starmer and his government have decided to compound their unpopularity amongst pensioners by stabbing Waspi women in the back. Women Against State Pension Inequality (Waspi) have long advocated for support for women who were born in the 1950s claiming that they did not get adequate warnings about changes to the state pension.

In March this year, the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) investigated complaints that, since 1995, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) failed to provide accurate, adequate and timely information about areas of state pension reform. The PHSO recommended compensation at a level of between £1,000 and £2,950 per person, as well as saying the DWP should acknowledge its failings and apologise.

However, on Tuesday, Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall announced to the Commons that the women will not be receiving any compensation, asserting that making compensation payments would be not fair nor give taxpayers value for money. In coming to this conclusion the government is directly contradicting and over-ruling the findings of the ombudsman, which calls into question the entire purpose of having an ombudsman investigate government decisions in the first place.

The Ombudsman investigated and found there was significant maladministration. If this proven maladministration had been by a bank or private sector institution, regulators and courts would have compelled the payment of significant compensation. The Government is judge, jury, and regulator and has chosen for the second time in its short term in office to alienate and anger an important group of voters. This is political illiteracy. Labour came into office promising to be the grown-ups after the chaos of the Tories, but they are acting like adolescent hooligans terrorising a granny at a bus stop.

Speaking while on a visit to Estonia to sit on a tank, Starmer said that he didn’t want to burden the taxpayer with the bill for compensation, saying: “I have to take into account whether it’s right at the moment to impose a further burden on the taxpayer.” If Starmer was so concerned about burdening the taxpayer, he could abolish the monarchy and the House of Lords. He could axe spending on the replacement for Trident. That would provide more than enough to give fair compensation to Waspi women.

Labour politicians including Kendall herself, but particularly those in Scotland, have long sought to associate themselves with the Waspi campaign while Labour was in opposition. Anas Sarwar and Jackie Baillie have both published photos of themselves campaigning alongside Waspi women and pledged their support to the campaign for compensation. Last year, Sarwar joined women at Paisley’s Sma Shot Parade, and was photographed walking behind their WASPI banner.

The Glasgow, Lanarkshire, Dunbartonshire, and Renfrewshire WASPI group thanked Sarwar for his support for their campaign, which at the time specifically called for compensation for the women affected. Back in 2017, Sarwar promised: “Under my leadership, Waspi women will finally receive the justice they deserve.” He didn’t say “read my lips” though.

However, that full-throated support did not last long once Labour won the Westminster general election, as Sarwar and his Labour MSPs abstained on an SNP vote in Holyrood calling on the UK Government to provide compensation for Waspi women, reportedly at the behest of Labour party HQ in London. Labour MSPs instead supported an amendment calling for “clarity” on a compensation scheme, which ultimately failed. We now know what that “clarity” consists of; it consists of nothing at all. The only clarity we do have is the clarity that the Labour party can never be relied on to deliver on its promises to the people of Scotland. When Labour said that a vote for Labour was a vote for change, they never specified that they meant the Labour Party changing its mind on support for a campaign that they have dined out on supporting for years.

SNP MP Kirsty Blackman, speaking after the announcement on Tuesday, hit out at Sarwar’s failure to follow through on his past promises of support for compensation.

She said in the House of Commons: “Is the justice they deserve being paid less than their male counterparts throughout their career? Is the justice they deserve being sacked or forced to resign from their jobs when they had children? Is the justice they deserve the removal of the winter fuel payment?”

Blackman then added: “Why are the Labour Government absolutely determined to take every opportunity to screw over 1950s-born women?”

BBC Scotland will now be contacting Starmer’s friends in Israel, asking to borrow the ‘Iron Dome’ so they can deploy it around Sarwar for his protection in case any pesky journalist breaks ranks and asks him a difficult question on the matter.

To compound the brazen shamelessness, Kendall had the brass neck to argue that the SNP should pay compensation for subsequent Westminster governments’ failures after she told the Commons that Waspi women would get nothing beyond an apology from the Labour administration. Kendall said in response to Kirsty Blackman: “This is about the way the state pension age was communicated. If the honourable lady wants a different approach, then the Scottish, the SNP Government in Scotland can do a different approach using the £4.9 billion settlement we have provided, the biggest ever in the history of devolution, if they want to take a different approach.”

Once again, the Labour Party pees the bed and expects the Scottish Government to clean up a mess that the Labour Party created. As sure as night follows day, watch Labour try and make their own catastrophic policy decisions turn SNP bad. There will be a BBC Scotland report about how the Scottish Government is at fault for not compensating Waspi women any minute now.

Yet the explanatory notes to the 2016 Scotland Act state: “The power to create new benefits will not extend to pensions as the Smith Commission Report specifically states that all aspects of pensions should remain reserved.” No matter what Kendall said, the Scottish Government has been legally prohibited by Westminster from “doing a different approach.” This is Labour’s mess; they own it, and this time, they can’t try to turn the blame back onto the Scottish Government as they tried and failed to do with the winter fuel payment. Labour appears to be hell-bent on converting those over 60 to support for independence.

GOING FURTHER

• Who are the ‘Waspi women’ and why do they feel betrayed over pensions? | THE GUARDIAN

• Frustrated Labour MPs Say WASPI Decision Shows Government Is "In A Bunker" | POLITICS HOME

• Chancellor Rachel Reeves campaigned alongside her mother for Waspi compensation while shadow pensions minister | SKY NEWS

• Starmer grilled by senior MPs amid growing Labour rebellion over Waspi women | THE INDEPENDENT

Sources:

▪ This piece was first published in Wee Ginger Dug and re-published in PUBLIC SQUARE UK on 19 December 2024 under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. | The author writes in a personal capacity.

▪ Cover: Flickr/Number 10. (Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.)