THE Barnsley Liberal Democrat group have accused the local Labour Party of refusing to commit to supporting justice for Women Against State Pension Inequality after they ‘watered’ down a motion that would have called on the government for more action.
The Women Against State Pension Inequality (WASPI) movement say they are fighting for justice for all women born in the 1950s who have been affected by changes to the state pension age.
About 3.6 million women were affected by the 1995 decision to increase the pension age to 65.
Of those, 2.6 million were affected by the decision to bring the date forward to 2018.
It’s accepted that changes affecting women born in the 1950s weren’t communicated quickly enough.
However, Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall rejected a recommendation to pay them up to £2,950 each.
At yesterday’s full council meeting, Lib Dem councillors Hannah Kitching and Will Fielding submitted a motion to the council criticising the government’s December announcement that they would not be implementing the recommendations of the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) in March 2024.
Coun Kitching, who leads the opposition group, said she had spoken to many WASPI women over the years and knew they were devastated and disappointed that justice would still not be served.
“I’m so proud that the Lib Dems have campaigned with and supported the WASPI campaign for many years now,” she said.
“Paying fast and fair compensation was in last year’s general election manifesto.
“We called on the council to write to the government, and also to Barnsley Labour MPs - who have supported WASPI women in the past but gone shamefully silent of late - to ask them to reconsider.”
However, the Labour group did not support the motion and instead submitted an amendment which Coun Kitching said ‘watered down the motion’ to let the government ‘off the hook’.
The original motion submitted stated that ‘this council believes that this government communication failure has had a profound effect not only on the individuals involved and their families but also on the wider community in Barnsley and on local government’.
But the amendment changed the wording the ‘potentially believes that’.
And rather than the council writing to local MPs expressing their regret that they have ‘failed in their duty to convince their own government to compensate WASPI women’, the Labour group instead called for a government investigation.
She added: “Rather than calling on the government to compensate these women, Barnsley Labour have instead made the same excuses they have used to justify every shameful action since last July cuts to winter fuel allowances, alienating the farming community and clobbering small businesses with national insurance increases that are strangling growth and risk cuts to jobs.
“They have even offered to spend local taxpayers money on supporting affected women.
“Of course the council should be offering support to everyone struggling financially within our borough - but for national scandals like this it should be the government that is paying up, not local authorities.
“We need to invest in failing services like domestic waste collections, not in letting the Labour government off the hook on refusing to support women who have been victims of such a gross injustice.
“It is absolutely shameful to acknowledge the hardships faced by these women, while also refusing to commit to compensating them.”
The original motion was shot down and the amendment was passed through full council.
