It is the season of goodwill and all that and one should try to end the political year with something that is light or uplifting or, ideally, both. But I am not going to do that.
The last parliamentary row of the year was the government’s decision to refuse the Waspi (Women Against State Pension Inequality) women any compensation. They were quite right to reject the claim. The Waspi campaign is one of the least meritorious causes for additional public expenditure of recent years.
Since 1993, there has been cross-party support for the principle that men and women should receive their state pension at the same age. The question then was at what age it should be equalised and when this should take effect. Given increases in life expectancy since the previous ages had been set in the 1940s, the Conservative government of the day legislated in 1995 that the State Pension Age (SPA) would be 65, with a rather leisurely timetable of this taking full effect for women in 2020.
By the time we got to 2011, with life expectancy having continued to increase and the public finances facing unsustainable long-term pressures, the coalition government accelerated the process to get to 65 by 2018 and 66 in 2020. It was in this context that the Waspi campaign was launched. “We assumed we’d get our pension at 60,” they complained. “No one told us… we paid in and we have built up an entitlement… we are being treated unfairly.”
These are not strong arguments. There was no secret about the increase in the pension age and governments sought to publicise the change. The pensions ombudsman concluded that more could have been done, but one wonders if an additional letter or two would have been read by those most determined to avoid the news.
Let us take the case of Diane, 71, who told television viewers last week that she had not been aware of the change in her pension age. The odd thing about her case is that when both the 1995 and 2011 pensions acts were passed, Diane was a member of parliament and has often spoken in the Commons about pension policy. And yet she was still apparently oblivious of the changes. If the test is that the least well-informed of those who are adversely affected by a change in the SPA has to be aware of it (perhaps we should call it the Abbott test), we would never be able to change it.
Some appear to think that should be the case. This is presumably because they are content to dump huge amounts of debt on future generations. They also argue that they have an entitlement, having paid taxes (sorry, make that “contributions”) that entitles them to a pension at whatever the age they have in their head. This is not how the state pension works. It is not a contributory entitlement when you get your own money back in retirement, it is a benefit paid for by current taxpayers.
The Waspi campaign has failed but its arguments were humoured for too long. Labour fought the 2017 and 2019 general elections promising £58bn of compensation. The promise was not repeated in 2024, but nor had been fully repudiated as an example of Corbynista profligacy. Shadow ministers had posed with placards saying that would deliver a “fair solution” to Waspi women, Starmer had spoken of the Waspi women suffering “a huge injustice”; Angela Rayner had previously talked about compensation for the loss of “their money” (back to the entitlement nonsense).
The Waspi women – and not just them – then complain about a breach of trust. The government looks shifty and faith in our political system takes another knock.
One can see how this happened. There are 3.6 million women affected, many of whom would welcome a few thousand pounds and might be more inclined to vote for a party that at least hints that they might get it under their watch. Maintaining some ambiguity might be politically helpful.
That is all very well until you are in power and you have to make decisions that result in the sums adding up. Suddenly there are limits on how one bribes the electorate with their own money, you have to say no, and then you are accused of having no political feel, of being out of touch.
The Waspi case is but one example of the government confronting reality but only after the election has passed. More fundamentally, Labour was always going to have to put up taxes, but did not level with the public because it feared the political consequences. And they may have been right. A flat refusal to compensate the Waspi women or a frank admission of rising taxes would have come at an electoral price.
This takes me to the rather depressing conclusion. We have an electorate with loose bonds to any of the political parties, which votes on a transactional basis on their own self-interests. Political parties respond accordingly, sympathising with unreasonable demands, shying away from telling the truth in the run-up to elections, only to disappoint the voters when in office. The electorate, in turn, becomes more cynical, concludes that politicians are all the same and become even more willing to vote on a transactional basis, rewarding those who make undeliverable promises.
The Waspi campaign is a classic example of selfish voters being pandered to and then left disappointed. If both politicians and the public carry on behaving like this, it will not end well.
And on that note, Merry Christmas.
[See also: Labour is heading for disaster in Wales]
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