Swinney blasts Labour’s ‘betrayal’ after no compensation for Waspi women

The UK Government’s refusal to compensate women who lost out on pensions cash is “another betrayal” from Labour, Scotland’s First Minister has said.

John Swinney branded the decision not to set up a compensation scheme for the so-called Waspi Women as being “deeply regrettable”.

He hit out after UK work and pensions secretary Pat McFadden told the Commons that a targeted compensation programme would “not be practical”, while a wider, flat-rate scheme could cost up to £10.3 billion.

Women Against State Pension Inequality (Waspi) has long-campaigned for affected women to be provided with compensation.

Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden announced the decision to the Commons on Thursday. PA Media

Its chairwoman, Angela Madden, accused the Government of treating 1950s-born women with “utter contempt”.

But McFadden insisted that the “vast majority of 1950s-born women already knew the state pension age was increasing” as a result of a “wide range of public information”, including leaflets, education campaigns, information in GP surgeries, on TV, radio, in cinemas and online.

The work and pensions secretary added: “To specifically compensate only those women who suffered injustice would require a scheme that could reliably verify the individual circumstances of millions of women.”

And he argued a wider, flat-rate scheme “would simply not be right or fair, given it would be paid to the vast majority who were aware of the changes”, he told MPs.

After reviewing the original decision not to offer payouts, he said the UK Government had “come to the same conclusion on compensation” as the previous work and pensions secretary, Liz Kendall, had announced in December 2024.

But raising the issue with Swinney at First Minister’s Questions, SNP MSP Kenneth Gibson – the convener of Holyrood’s Finance Committee – branded the decision not to pay compensation by the Labour government as “a new low even for them”.

Swinney said: “I think this is deeply regrettable that there is no compensation going to be in place for the Waspi women.”

Women who have lost out have been campaigning for compensation across the UK. PA Media

He added: “These women were promised, in good faith, that the Labour Party would address when they got into government this historic injustice and it is just another example of the betrayal of individuals in this country by this Labour Government.”

Kirsty Blackman MP, the SNP’s work and pensions spokesperson at Westminster, was also critical.

She said Thursday’s announcement “confirms what many of us already knew and feared – Keir Starmer and Anas Sarwar cynically lied to the Waspi women to win votes at the last general election”.

She stated: “Before the last general election, Sir Keir Starmer promised to compensate the Waspi women with Labour Party politicians lined up behind Waspi placards and pledges; only to sit on their hands when they could actually do something about it.

“It’s no wonder so many have lost faith in the Westminster political establishment.”

Blackman insisted: “Waspi women deserve so much better, they deserve fair and fast compensation.”

With elections looming at Holyrood in May, she also said women who had lost out, along with their supporters, would “not forget that blatant broken promise from Keir Starmer’s Labour Party”.