Aberdeenshire North and Moray East MP Seamus Logan joined local Banff and Buchan and Aberdeen WASPI campaigners outside the Houses of Parliament to call for compensation ahead of the Chancellor’s 2024 Budget.
Women Against State Pension Inequality groups from across the UK had gathered in their hundreds at Westminster to demand justice for their financial losses due to the previous Government’s maladministration.
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MP Seamus Logan said: “WASPI women from my constituency and the length and breadth of the UK will be devastated by the absence of any compensation measures for their financial loss in Rachel Reeves’ first Budget.
“Despite pledges to compensate those affected by the Infected and Contaminated Blood and Post Office Horizon scandals in the Chancellor’s speech, and despite many Labour MPs vocal support for WASPI women’s plight, once again they have been left out in the cold.
“It seems this Labour government are intent on ignoring pensioners from the WASPI women to those needing Winter Fuel Payments.”
The WASPI campaign was established back in 2015 when the then UK Government accelerated the timetable for increases in women’s state pension age meaning that many women born in the 1950s missed out on making informed decisions on their financial futures.
Mr Logan had previously highlighted the WASPI campaign in his first speech to Parliament after he was elected, and over the summer wrote to the Minister for Pensions, Emma Reynolds, asking her to kick start the process of making these payments to women affected by the changes to the State Pension Age.
Seamus Logan added: “Labour have once again let down WASPI women. For too long these dogged campaigners have struggled to get any meaningful commitment for compensation despite the damning Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman report which uncovered failings by the DWP and previous Tory Government and clearly ruled that women affected should be compensated.
“In fact, the Chief Executive of this report went as far as recommending that since the DWP had refused to comply, Parliament needed to act to make sure a compensation scheme was established.
“My colleagues and I in the SNP will continue to fight on to right this wrong for WASPI women and to ensure that any compensation when it does come will not be means tested. I will be writing to Minister Reynolds again to this effect.”
