Ombudsman report backs WASPI women's fight - led by Chesterfield campaigner - for compensation over pension age change

The Parliamentary and Health Ombudsman suggests that the women should receive a payout of between £1,000 and £2,950. The Ombudsman’s report refers to level four on the compensation scale - a significant and/or lasting injustice that has, to some extent, affected someone's ability to live a relatively normal life.

Campaigners for Women Against State Pension Inequality (WASPI) have been pushing for £10,000 for women who lost out when the Department of Work and Pension failed to give them adequate notice that their retirement age was going to be raised to equate with men’s.

Angela Madden, who lives near Chesterfield and chairs the national WASPI group, told BBC Sounds that an all-party Parliamentary group had provided evidence to the Ombudsman’s enquiry and had suggested level six on the severity of injustice sale. Angela said: “That would be £10,000 per woman – there are 3.6 million of us and it would be £36billion. The government have already saved £181billion by making this move and we’re asking for a fraction.

“The state pension isn’t massive but many people depend on it totally because in our day there wasn’t equality in the workplace," said Angela. “Pension schemes were allowed to ban women because they thought we wouldn’t be working very long, we’d be leaving to have babies.”

Angela retired early to spend time with her frail mother, believing that she would get her pension at 60. But two years before she thought she was due to receive it she got a letter saying that her new state pension age was going to be extended. Angela told BBC Sounds: “I felt absolutely let down by the government, I felt cancelled, I felt we didn’t matter to the government.”

She estimates to have lost in the region of £40,000 as a result of the change to state pension age.

The Ombudsman’s report states: "The DWP has not acknowledged its failings nor put things right for those women affected.” Doubting whether the DWP will provide a remedy, the body is ‘asking Parliament to identify a mechanism for providing appropriate remedy for those who have suffered injustice.’