19 DECEMBER 2024 | OPINION
The loudest buzz this week was about WASPIs – Women Against State Pension Inequality.
In 1995, the then-Conservative Government raised women’s State Pension Age (SPA) by five years to equalise it with men’s – and in 2011, the Con/LibDem coalition accelerated the phasing-in. In July this year, the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) found the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) guilty of maladministration in not promptly and adequately informing those affected, and recommended compensation – which Labour yesterday refused.
Four people raised this issue in yesterday’s PMQs.
The first was the Leader of the Opposition. Kemi Badenoch is not trained in law, and it shows: she has not the knack of merciless forensic drilling that allows no escape for the victim. Once again, she asked a portmanteau question, in this case combining WASPIs with those who have applied for pension credit since the scrapping of the Winter Fuel Allowance.
Starmer gladly grabbed the latter alternative, boasting of his retention of the State Pension ‘triple lock’ and scoring off Kemi by noting that her Shadow Chancellor recently called it “unsustainable”. It was a hit aimed at the weak coordination of her Shadow Cabinet, also instanced when her Shadow Science Minister contradicted her on NIC policy.
How much longer can Badenoch retain her grip on the perfidious Conservative rump in Parliament? She identifies as Yoruba, but that could easily mean ‘taxi’s here, Kemi!’
The next to tackle the PM on WASPIs was Plaid Cymru’s Ben Lake and Sir Keir finally gave a detailed response. He admitted that the DWP’s failures under Labour in the mid-Noughties was “unacceptable”, but paired that with George Osborne’s “equally unacceptable” speeding up of the SPA-matching process – which the ‘Austerity Chancellor’ infamously told global investors “probably saved more money than anything else we’ve [the Conservative administration] done“.
Starmer added that the country cannot afford the compensation because of “the state of our economy” and gave us one of his Killer Factoids: “The evidence shows that 90% of those impacted knew about the changes.”
A legally-trained Killer-Driller might ask more about the evidence, and whether the other ten percent should not be made whole. Similarly, the PM’s claim – repeated today – about the IHT threshold for farmers being £3 million, and the other one about £5 billion to be invested in farming (er, over two years, and spent on what, exactly?). Both need meticulous unpacking.
This approach is vital in puncturing Labour’s dreamworld – the one in which they force us to live. For in other, non-PMQ Parliamentary hearings, the Foreign Office has been squirming over the Chagos Islands giveaway, which reportedly the new Mauritian PM has rejected, and sketch-writer Quentin Letts has had sport with Energy Secretary David Miliband’s body language during interrogation by Claire Coutinho.
A third questioner on WASPI was Ian Byrne, one of the seven Labour rebels who had the whip withdrawn for supporting an end to the two-child benefit cap. A stuttering Starmer repeated points he had made earlier to Ben Lake.
Nor was the PM off the hook even then. ‘Mother of the House’ Diane Abbott reminded him that “we did promise [the WASPI women] that we would give them justice”. Indeed, not merely ‘we’ but ‘he’: in 2021, Starmer helped two WASPI campaigners hold a sign supporting ‘fair and fast compensation’, and in 2022, he told BBC Radio Merseyside that it was “a real injustice” and “we need to do something about it”. So when Abbott asked “does the Prime Minister really understand how let down they feel today?”, all he could do was reply: “I do understand the concern.”
As Letts notes, thanks to the electoral landslide, there are numerous Labour backbenchers with no hope of ministerial office and facing defeat in their constituencies next time round, who may begin gossiping about their “inept, absent Prime Minister”.
Perhaps Starmer and Badenoch make a pair of wobbly bookends.
