WASPI take legal action against the Department of Work and Pensions – 16 March 2025

16th March 2025

Why are we taking legal action?

The background to our case:

In 1995 the Government decided to equalise the State Pension so that women would receive their State Pension at the same age as men. To provide enough notice they decided that between 2010 and 2020 the State Pension age (SPa) for women would increase gradually from 60 to 65.

Then later in 2011 the Government decided to bring in the change to 65 earlier and also to increase the SPa for women and men to 66. All those born after 6 March 1953 had up to a further 18 months added to their SPa.

WASPI has never taken issue with the change to the SPa itself. Our campaign is about the lack of notice that the Government gave women. Unfortunately they did not tell the women directly affected until very near to their 60th birthdays. Because of the late notice, the plans women had already made for their retirement were completely shattered. Inevitably, women felt undervalued and angry; they posted their views on social media. We soon realised that many of us felt the same and our Campaign started in 2015.

We took legal advice and started a mass complaints process against the Department of work and Pensions (DWP). This process went through four stages before an Independent Case Examiner (ICE) looked at our complaints. Only after ICE rejected our complaints could we lodge our complaints with the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO). The PHSO’s role is to independently investigate complaints by the general public and the government pays for this work.

The PHSO Investigation

The PHSO selected six cases to represent all the complaints they received. They examined thousands of pages of evidence from these test cases and from the DWP. After a thorough investigation lasting almost six years they issued their final judgement in March 2024. They found that the DWP had maladministered the communication of the changes to the SPa for women. Importantly, they also found that the women affected by this maladministration had suffered injustice. The PHSO recommended compensation for all women who had been similarly affected.

Government’s response to the PHSO findings

On December 17th the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (SSWP) told Parliament that she agreed with the PHSO findings on maladministration and apologised for it. She went on to say that she did not agree that women had suffered injustice. The DWP asserted, using surveys which the PHSO had already considered and rejected, that the majority of women knew their SPa. A further claim was that even if the Government sent us an unsolicited letter earlier we would not have read it. You can read their full response here.

What our legal team advised

Bindman’s LLP are a leading firm of solicitors in Public Law. They set us on the complaints journey and have helped us successfully challenge the PHSO in the past so we sought their advice again. They, and our barristers, feel that we can demonstrate that the DWP has acted unlawfully in their response. We set up a CrowdJustice campaign and quickly raised sufficient funds to mount a Judicial Review (JR) of the SSWP’s decisions. We are now part way through the JR process. Papers were submitted to the Royal Courts of Justice on 17 March 2025. The SSWP has responded to our claims and a judge will now look at the legal arguments and decide if there is a case to argue. Watch this space for future updates.