Tag Archives: alison bennett

You know when politicians stand there with pledge boards and cosy up to campaigning organisations promising certain things if they should get into government?  And then don’t deliver on those promises? It doesn’t tend to end well. We in the Liberal Democrats know that more than most.

It took almost a decade of hard slog for us to recover from the damage to our reputation from the tuition fees debacle.  We learned that voters have long memories when they feel betrayed. You can’t do something bad in the first few months of an administration and get away with it.

Hot on the heels of taking away the Winter Fuel Payment from millions of pensioners on low incomes, Labour have betrayed the WASPI women they have been courting over the past decade. We’ve all seen the pictures of half the Cabinet beaming beside WASPI women. And yesterday DWP Secretary Liz Kendall said that Labour would not be paying them a penny in compensation.

This is a generation of women who started work before the Sex Discrimination Act of 1976. Many were forced to give up work – even in the Civil Service – when they got married. Others were sacked for getting pregnant. They have been at the sharp end of the Gender Pay Gap for their working lives. As well as bearing the brunt of caring responsibilities for the previous and next generations. That hasn’t changed that much in the past half century either.

And now you have the spectacle of a Government admitting that mistakes had been made and maladministration had happened but there was to be no redress.

When you think that Labour was responsible for a derisory 75p pension increase for pensioners the last time they were in power, you could be forgiven for thinking that they really were not that keen on older people.

I don’t think that that is the case for most Labour MPs and I suspect many of them will be feeling incredibly uncomfortable.

Lib Dem MPs have condemned the Government’s announcement. “A day of shame” our DWP spokesperson Steve Darling called it.

Today is a day of shame for the government.

The new government has turned its back on millions of pension-age women who were wronged through no fault of their own, ignoring the independent Ombudsman’s recommendations, and that is frankly disgraceful.

The Conservative party left our economy in a shambles, but asking wronged pensioners to pay the price of their mismanagement is simply wrong.

For years, Liberal Democrats have pushed the government to fairly compensate WASPI women in line with the Ombudsman’s recommendations. Today’s heartless decision cannot be allowed to stand and we will be pressing ministers to give those affected the fair treatment they deserve.

In his response to the Statement in the  Commons, Steve said:

First, and for the record, the Liberal Democrats played a significant part in government in introducing the triple lock for our pensioners—it is important that people acknowledge that.

The Government’s decision is nothing short of a betrayal of WASPI women. I know that, as in my constituency of Torbay, across the United Kingdom there will be millions of women who are shocked and horrified at that decision. That the Government have inherited an awful state for our economy is no excuse. That the women are being hit by the mistakes of the Tories and that the Labour Government are now using that as a shield is utterly wrong-headed. Will the Secretary of State reflect on the decision?

The matter went to the ombudsman for its considered review, and the Liberal Democrats have long supported the ombudsman’s findings. I am shocked that the Government are taking a pick-and-mix approach to those findings, and we therefore ask the Secretary of State to seriously reconsider the decision.

Twelve other Lib Dem MPs spoke in the session on the statement: