WASPI women: £10bn to a small group of wealthy pensioners is not in country's best interests

When young people can't access affordable housing and children increasingly grow up in poverty then resolving the WASPI wrangle should not be Labour's priority

There’s a continuing focus on the plight of the WASPI women who were born in the 1950s - it will be on your TV screens, the newspaper front pages and on your social media feeds. They have long claimed they were unfairly penalised when the state pension age for women was raised to match that of men.

Many argue they were not adequately informed of the change, which disrupted their financial planning. Some even discovered their pension age had increased by several years only after they had already left work.

In March, the Parliamentary Ombudsman found that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) could have communicated the changes better. The Ombudsman suggested a benchmark compensation figure of between £1,000 and £2,950 to the 3.5 million affected women, costing the taxpayer between £3.5bn and £10.5bn. Labour, however, has wisely refused to commit to this pay out.

While there is sympathy for women who were caught off guard and financially impacted, it is difficult to justify allocating such a blanket sum of public money to a group that is, on average, part of the wealthiest generation – holding over three-quarters of the nation’s property wealth. Across the rest of the country, one in four people live in poverty, including one in three children, while over a quarter of pensioners are millionaires.

Where wealth sits and how it is used is what Labour is working to rebalance

While there are significant inequalities within age groups, these statistics underscore the stark contrast in financial hardship experienced by younger generations compared to pensioners – the former having encountered significantly worsening living standards, unaffordable housing, and wage stagnation compared to their parents.

A £10bn handout to a relatively small group of pensioners, for whom many the sum would have little tangible impact, would undermine Labour’s messaging on fiscal prudence and economic rebalancing.

But the party needs to communicate its position more effectively. Labour must be clear: investing in public services, building affordable housing, and driving wage growth to support current and future generations benefits us all, and far more equally, than hand-outs for age groups that already have more security than others.

Labour’s choice is not an easy one. Telling a group that has suffered an injustice “no” is politically fraught, especially for a party striving to establish itself as compassionate and fair. But this decision represents a necessary rebalancing of resources to counteract decades of economic policies that have left younger generations with fewer opportunities and diminished social mobility.

In the face of a media ecosystem that lionises pensioners, Labour must articulate this story with conviction. What happens if the government proceeds as is, ignoring the ticking timebomb of young people who can’t access affordable housing, public services, or have families? What happens to society, and to an entire generation disenfranchised by a political class that left them in ruin?

Consensus is growing across Westminster that Labour needs to be stronger with its messaging: it’s about fairness for the future, not just for today.