Hansard

I will undoubtedly miss being in the Government. It has been my life for almost the past 12 years. However, there will be some silver linings. The first, of course, is the time that I will be able to spend with my family, although I have to confess that my 15-year-old daughter Maya did not look overly excited by that prospect.

The second silver lining is that I will be able to dedicate more time to my constituents and my constituency. A part of my constituency that I share with Nicola Sturgeon is Govan, which is where the Mary Barbour statue is located. That monument was a very fitting end point to a march and rally that was organised by the WASPI women in 2019, which I had the pleasure of attending, alongside my daughter Maya. I took Maya to that march and rally not just to tell her about the injustices that have been done to the WASPI women, but to show her the hundreds and thousands of women who are standing up not only for their own rights but the rights of all women and girls, regardless of their age.

The injustice that has been done to the WASPI women is undoubtedly a gender injustice. There is no doubt in my mind—none whatsoever—that if men had been treated in the same way and had had their hard-earned money taken away from them, with little or no choice and no notice, not only would there have been an outrage but—crucially—the Westminster establishment would have found a solution.

For years, the pleas of the WASPI women have fallen on deaf ears in the corridors of Whitehall. They have been ignored by the United Kingdom Government, ministers, the Treasury and virtually every member and department of the UK Government. Any other campaign, or any other campaigners, might have simply run out of steam and given up due to the intransigence of the political establishment at Westminster, but not the WASPI women. A number of those incredible women are in the public gallery today, just behind me. They should be commended and applauded for not taking no for an answer. I say thank you to the WASPI women for their tireless efforts. [Applause.]

The WASPI women have pursued every avenue possible to demand their rights, and I am pleased that the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman has agreed that the WASPI women have been wronged and deserve justice. Let me be clear: the Scottish Government does not just support the WASPI women’s right to justice—that, of course, we do. We support their calls for compensation, too.

The PHSO report, which was finally published on 21 March after far too long a wait, criticises the handling of the Department for Work and Pensions communications on the equalisation of the state pension age for men and women, and it calls for the women who have been impacted by those failings to be compensated to the value of between £1,000 and £2,950. That is level 4 of the six levels of compensation that are available to the PHSO.

However, the Scottish Government recognises the WASPI campaign’s call for the highest level of £10,000 or more to be awarded, to properly reflect the harm that has been caused to those women over time. The Scottish Government will do all that it can to demand that Westminster does the right thing and fully compensates the women whom it has wronged.

It is deeply disappointing that I have yet to receive a response to my letter to the Prime Minister and to Sir Keir Starmer, in which I stated that the current—or, indeed, any future—UK Government must take action immediately to compensate the women who have been impacted. I look forward to the chamber uniting in agreement on righting an historic injustice. I note that all party leaders in this Parliament have pledged their support to the WASPI campaign and have committed to compensation for the WASPI women.

Although the recent commitments of Labour and the Conservatives to the triple lock are critical, it would be a complete abandonment of the WASPI women if neither Rishi Sunak nor Keir Starmer pledged to deliver compensation to the women who have been affected. Although—frankly—I would expect the Conservatives to shirk their responsibilities, for Labour to do the same is unforgivable. Labour politicians have taken great delight in turning up at photo calls with the WASPI women, wearing the purple sashes and promising to stand in solidarity with the women who have been impacted, but it is not pictures or warm words that the WASPI women want; they want justice and compensation.

If Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves—the woman who is likely to be the next UK Chancellor of the Exchequer—continue to turn their backs on the WASPI women by refusing to commit to compensation, it would be an absolute betrayal, for which they should never be forgiven.

The Scottish National Party-led Scottish Government has always supported the WASPI campaign, and we will always seek to do so. I was delighted to attend the WASPI gathering on 18 April in the Parliament and to talk to the WASPI campaigners, which I had the pleasure of doing before this debate, too. Each of the women—women who wanted to spend this chapter of their lives free of any financial worries—has a story.

To Anne, Kathy, Rosie and the many other WASPI women whom I have had the privilege of meeting, I say that your tireless campaigning has most certainly inspired not only me but politicians from right across the spectrum. Let me be very clear: on reaching this important milestone in your journey for justice, my colleagues and I—this Government—will stand shoulder to shoulder with you until compensation has been paid in full.

We also support SNP MP Alan Brown’s bill, which is currently making its way through the UK Parliament and calls for the UK Government to compensate women who were born in the 1950s. I hope that Tory and Labour politicians here, who will stand up shortly and tell WASPI women that they support their campaign, will put their money where their mouth is and that they will use any influence that they have, regardless of how small it might be, in their own parties and demand that their leaders in London do the right thing and compensate the WASPI women in full. Let us hear no more excuses about how tight money is—we know how constrained the finances are, but this is about priorities.

The PHSO report makes it clear that

“finite resources should not be used as an excuse for failing to provide a fair remedy.”

We agree. With each day that passes without justice, the financial harm that has been done to the women impacted increases.

Of course, with the passage of time, more and more of the women affected will not live to see justice. The WASPI website has two counters on the home page: one keeps a tally of the number of WASPI women who have died without receiving justice or compensation, and the other shows the total amount that the Treasury has saved through the disgraceful actions of the Westminster Government. This morning, those counters showed that 277,389 women have died without being given compensation and that the Treasury has disgracefully benefited to the tune of £4 billion.

In Scotland alone, 336,000 women have been affected. In total, they are owed between £300 million and £1 billion by the UK Government just for the compensation that the PHSO has recommended. That amount would be even more if it reflected the WASPI campaign’s assessment of the harm that has been done.

A survey of 8,000 WASPI women that was carried out in autumn last year found that 70 per cent of WASPI women had reduced their weekly spending and had cut their food shop in the past six months. The UK Government needs to step up and take responsibility for its failure to properly communicate the changes that have so adversely impacted those women. If the uncaring and uncompassionate UK Government is not willing to do the right thing, a potential future Labour Government must stop the dithering and delay and commit explicitly to full compensation for the WASPI women—and it should do so now.

As I stated at the outset of my speech, this is a monumental failing of the UK Government’s own making. WASPI women maintain that they do not argue against equalisation in principle. However, the UK Government’s approach to the equalisation of state pension age was badly communicated from the beginning and led to millions of women across the UK being unfairly penalised.

As I said earlier, I have written to the Prime Minister and the leader of the Opposition regarding the issue. In my letter, I provided a copy of a letter from Anne Potter, the co-ordinator of WASPI Glasgow, Lanarkshire, Dunbartonshire and Renfrewshire, who is known to many members across the chamber. In that letter, Anne references the historic injustice that the millions of women and their families across the UK have faced throughout the WASPI scandal. More pertinently, she makes the point that that can be overcome by politicians doing the right thing and working together.

If nothing else, we—all of us—owe that to those who have already passed away without receiving so much as an apology, let alone justice or the compensation that they deserved.

Let the voices in the chamber unite. Let them be unequivocal in their cry—no ifs, no buts, no maybes—that the UK Government, current or future, must deliver fair and full compensation to all the women who have been impacted.

I can give WASPI women a personal promise. Be it from the front benches or the back benches, they will always have my unwavering support and admiration. I thank all the incredible and unrelenting WASPI women for fighting not just for themselves but for my daughters.

It is with great pride that I move,

That the Parliament welcomes the report from the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman into the pension injustices on women born in the 1950s; agrees that the UK Government must now urgently deliver on the ombudsman’s recommendations to pay compensation in full to those women without delay; echoes the Women Against State Pension Inequality (WASPI) campaign’s calls for a higher level of compensation to properly reflect the financial harm; notes the report’s conclusions on the UK Government’s failings of communication and maladministration; congratulates the WASPI women on this milestone in their campaign, and highlights cross-party commitments to delivering justice for them all.