Waspi campaign accuses Starmer of misinformation over claim 90% of women knew pension age to rise – politics live

Waspi campaign accuses Starmer of ‘misinformation’, saying he overstated awareness of planned pension age rise
The Women Against State Pension Inequality (Waspi) campaign has accused Keir Starmer of spreading “misinformation” about the plight of women who were not given proper warning about the rise in their state pension age.
Referring to Starmer’s claim at PMQs that 90% of women affected by the increase knew that it was coming (see 12.34pm and 2.21pm), Angela Madden, the Waspi chair, said:
This isn’t just misleading; it’s an insult to millions of 1950s-born women who were blindsided by these changes. The ombudsman’s findings were based on rigorous evidence showing that 60% of women had no idea their own state pension age was rising.
The government’s attempt to cherry-pick data to suggest otherwise is spreading dangerous misinformation, plain and simple.
Waspi says the 90% figure quoted by Starmer covers includes people who only had vague idea that the state pension age was going up. Madden said:
The fact that 90% of women had some general awareness of potential changes in the future does not mean they knew this would impact them personally.
That is exactly why the ombudsman identified maladministration and why this government’s continued attempts to muddy the waters are so unacceptable.
Madden also said that Waspi was “not giving up”. She said MPs were meeting to discuss how they could arrange for a vote on compensation to take place in the Commons. And the campaign was also taking legal advice on its options, she revealed.
Key events
Tom Belger at LabourList is keeping a tally of Labour MPs who have spoken out publicly against the government’s decision not to compensate the Waspi women. Currently, there are 16 names on the list. But, in private, more Labour MPs have expressed their alarm about this, Belger says – and not just leftwingers.
Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar criticises government’s decision not to compensate Waspi women
Severin Carrell
Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, has attacked the decision not to compensate the Wapsi pensioners and urged UK ministers to look at other ways of providing financial support.
Speaking at the Scottish parliament, Sarwar said:
I don’t think the decision the government has come to is the right one on compensation; I think they’ve come to the right place on injustice and I think they’ve come to the right place on an apology but I don’t think they’ve come to the right decision on compensation.
Given the public finances, I think a different way forward could’ve been found.
Pressed by Peter Macmahon, political editor of ITV Borders, about the furious reaction from the Waspi pensioners, Sarwar added:
I agree with them on their frustration and that’s why I campaigned alongside them, and I accept that frustration.
Therefore, as I say, I don’t think this is the adequate package … I think a fairer decision could’ve been made around the compensation and that fairer decision could have been – recognising the current financial situation – they could’ve looked at targeted support to lower income pensioners, they could’ve looked at tapering, they could’ve looked at increments, they could’ve looked at a whole host of issues.
Sarwar has now attacked several deeply unpopular financial decisions by the UK government which led to Labour’s popularity plummeting, including the decision to heavily cut access to winter fuel payments for pensioners and the refusal to reverse the two-child benefit cap.
Scottish Labour’s popular support has nose-dived in recent weeks, ending a long period where Sarwar’s party was neck and neck with the Scottish National party.
To Sarwar’s frustration, the SNP government used a very beneficial Treasury settlement in the latest budget to reintroduce a universal winter fuel payment and to pledge that in 2026 it will reverse the two child cap, largely funded by UK taxpayers.
Current polling suggests the SNP would comfortably win the 2026 Holyrood elections.
Waspi decision ignores ‘systemic disadvantages women already face in pension provision’, says Fawcett Society
The Fawcett Society, which campaigns for gender equality and women’s rights, has said it is “bitterly disappointed” by the government’s decision not to compensate Waspi women.
In a statement, Jemima Olchawski, the charity’s CEO says the government is wrong to say women were adequately informed about rise in the state pension age and she says thousands of women suffered “significant hardship” because they were unable to adjust their financial plans in time. She goes on:
This decision ultimately fails to acknowledge the systemic disadvantages women aready face in pension provision. We add our voice to the many calling on the government to reconsider its position and deliver justice for all the women impacted.
You can read the full statement here.
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More than 70 MPs and peers back campaign to stop closure of thinktank praised for its Brexit-related research

Lisa O’Carroll
More than 70 MPs and peers have intervened to try and save UK In a Changing Europe (UKICE), an independent thinktank that has specialised in research on the consequences of Brexit and future relations with the EU.
At a time the UK is trying to reset its relationship with Europe and improve Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal, UK in a Changing Europe run by Anand Menon, a professor at King’s College London, is facing closure because of a decision by its financial backer, the Economic and Social Research Council, to end funding.
Among the signatories are Lords Jay, Kinnock, Liddle, McNally and Rennard, all of whom have been vocal during the Brexit debates, MPs Richard Baker, Laula Moran, Antonia Bance and John McDonnell, and Northern Ireland MPs such as Colum Eatwood, who have been central to the Brexit negotiations on the Windsor Framework.
The MPs and peers say in a letter to ESRC that many of them “still rely on UKICE for key information, not least its divergence tracker” from the only team dynamically tracking the regulatory gaps emerging between EU law on UK law since Brexit came into force in 2020.
They go on to say that while no institution should expect open-ended funding, UKICE’s reports are not just “reliable and well informed” but they produce research that is “clear and accessible”, something they say is “surely the whole point of state-funded social science research”.
The point out that “Brexit is indeed a process, not merely an event” and urge ESRC to reconsider its decision.
Another supporter of the campaign is the Labour MP Paul Waugh, a former political journalist. He has posted a copy of the letter on social media.
.@UKandEU has for years produced high quality research on the UK’s links with the EU.
Yet it now faces closure because of @ESRC grant cuts.
Some 66 of us Parliamentarians (38 MPs and 28 peers) have signed a cross-party letter urging @UKRI_News to reconsider their decision. pic.twitter.com/McGHU4OQMU
— Paul Waugh MP (@paulwaugh) December 18, 2024
YouGov has released polling that suggests only 13% of Britons think Kemi Badenoch looks like a prime minister in waiting. Some 53% think she doesn’t look like a prime minister in waiting, and the rest are not sure.
Given that Badenoch has only recently started in this role, and that the next election may well be more than four years away, that probably does not matter much. But, in its analysis, YouGov points out that when Keir Starmer first became Labour leader, 32% of people said he looked like a PM in waiting, and only 33% said he didn’t.
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has now published its news release summarising the local government funding settlement for England for 2025-26. (See 2.14pm.) Here are the key points.
£69bn of funding will be injected into council budgets across England to help them drive forward the government’s Plan for Change through investment and reform and to fix the foundations of local government, ministers have announced today.
The provisional local government finance settlement will provide £69bn for councils across the country, a real-terms increase of 3.5% from 2024-25, which includes a new emergency £600 million Recovery Grant, offering better value for money through the repurposing of grants to help support councils most in need and maximise every penny of public spending to ensure it delivers for working people.
And £3.7bn of funding will be made available to social care authorities to support adult and children’s services through the settlement. This includes £880m for the Social Care Grant – an increase of £200m compared to what was indicated last month, taking its total to £5.9bn – which will support councils to deliver care for adults and children in their communities, helping to reduce pressure on the NHS.
No council will see a reduction in core spending power. Places with a significant rural population will on average receive around a 5% increase in their core spending power to ensure rural communities have the support they need. We are maintaining the previous government’s referendum threshold for council tax , which will be maintained at 3% with 2% for the adult social care precept to protect local taxpayers
Waspi campaign accuses Starmer of ‘misinformation’, saying he overstated awareness of planned pension age rise
The Women Against State Pension Inequality (Waspi) campaign has accused Keir Starmer of spreading “misinformation” about the plight of women who were not given proper warning about the rise in their state pension age.
Referring to Starmer’s claim at PMQs that 90% of women affected by the increase knew that it was coming (see 12.34pm and 2.21pm), Angela Madden, the Waspi chair, said:
This isn’t just misleading; it’s an insult to millions of 1950s-born women who were blindsided by these changes. The ombudsman’s findings were based on rigorous evidence showing that 60% of women had no idea their own state pension age was rising.
The government’s attempt to cherry-pick data to suggest otherwise is spreading dangerous misinformation, plain and simple.
Waspi says the 90% figure quoted by Starmer covers includes people who only had vague idea that the state pension age was going up. Madden said:
The fact that 90% of women had some general awareness of potential changes in the future does not mean they knew this would impact them personally.
That is exactly why the ombudsman identified maladministration and why this government’s continued attempts to muddy the waters are so unacceptable.
Madden also said that Waspi was “not giving up”. She said MPs were meeting to discuss how they could arrange for a vote on compensation to take place in the Commons. And the campaign was also taking legal advice on its options, she revealed.

Libby Brooks
One of Reform UK’s organisers in Scotland has been suspended following reports of his family ties to violent Loyalists.
Reform UK said it had suspended Craig Campbell after the Daily Record reported that he is the son of a Loyalist bomber, responsible for attacks on two Glasgow pubs in the 1970s, and the cousin of a man jailed for stabbing a Celtic fan to death.
It has also been claimed that he had images comparing the SNP to Nazis on his social media accounts, which have now been deleted and which the Guardian has been unable to independently verify.
A spokesperson for Reform UK Scotland confirmed Campbell was no longer in the role, adding the party “will not tolerate discrimination of anyone in any form”.
Starmer under pressure at PMQs to give MPs vote on compensation for Waspi women
This is what PA Media has filed on the Waspi exchanges from PMQs.
Keir Starmer is facing pressure to give MPs a vote on his government’s decision to rule out compensation for women affected by changes to the state pension age.
The prime minister insisted taxpayers could not afford the £10.5bn compensation package, and would not rise to calls for a vote on the decision as he came under fire in the Commons.
But Downing Street said it had “no plans” for a vote on the issue, adding MPs had had “an opportunity to have their say” on Tuesday.
Starmer, chancellor Rachel Reeves and work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall – who ruled out a compensation package on Tuesday – are among the senior ministers who backed the Women Against State Pension Inequality (Waspi) campaign when Labour was in opposition.
But at PMQs Starmer insisted that paying compensation was not affordable when asked by Plaid Cymru MP Ben Lake if rejecting the financial package was part of his “government of change”.
Starmer described delays in communicating changes to the state pension age for women born in the 1950s as “unacceptable”, and criticised George Osborne’s move to accelerate the programme when he was chancellor.
He added: “It is a serious issue. It is a complex issue. The research, as he knows, shows that 90% of those impacted knew about the changes that were taking place. I am afraid to say the taxpayers simply cannot afford the tens of billions of pounds in compensation when the evidence does show that 90% of those impacted did know about it. That is because of the state of our economy.”
Independent MP Ian Byrne (Liverpool West Derby) told the chamber the Waspi women had experienced an “injustice done to them at the hands of the state”. He asked: “Will the prime minister give members the opportunity to vote on whether they believe Waspi women are owed compensation?”
Starmer replied: “I just set out the factual background and the percentage that knew about the change, and the simple fact of the matter is, in the current economic circumstances, the taxpayer can’t bear the burden of tens of billions of pounds in compensation.”
Labour grandee Diane Abbott, the mother of the house, also criticised the decision. “We did promise them that we will give them justice. I understand the issue about the cost, but does the Prime Minister really understand how let down Waspi women feel today?” she told the Commons.
Minister announces £700m extra for local government in England in 2025-26 funding settlement
Jim McMahon, the local government minister, told MPs that the government has allocated an extra £700m for local government in England. In a statement to MPs on the local government settlement for 2025-26, he said council finances were in “dire straits”. He said:
This is why today I am announcing over £700m of additional grant. This includes over £200 million of extra funding for social care since the policy statement …
Taken together, the additional funding made available at this settlement and the Budget delivers over £5bn of new funding for local services over and above local council tax.”
We must ensure that public investment is used too for long-term prevention and the reform of local public services, rather than expensive short-term crisis responses which we know often have much worsening outcomes. We are determined to end the cycle of failure that we have seen for too long. We will provide certainty by making sure that no authority will see a reduction in their core spending power after accounting for council tax flexibilities next year.
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has published a stack of documents, with all the authority-by-authority details, on its website here.
Foreign Office minister rejects Tory claim Chagos Islands deal is ‘monumental failure of statecraft’
A Foreign Office minister has rejected Tory claims that the government’s deal with Mauritius giving it sovereignty of the Chagos Islands is a “monumental failure of statecraft”
Priti Patel, the shadow foreign secretary, made the claim in a Commons urgent statement, asking for assurance that the UK and the US would continue to have “full autonomy” over their military base on Diego Garcia once sovereignty has been transferred.
She said:
When the whole world can see that this proposed deal was falling apart, the foreign secretary and this government have tried to flog it constantly. Not only is this a monumental failure of statecraft from this Labour government, it is also a significant humiliation for the foreign secretary and his credibility and the prime minister, and why are Labour putting the security at risk, ignoring Chagossians and letting our standing go into freefall in this world?
Responding for the government, Stephen Doughty, the Foreign Office minister, said the deal would not damage UK security. He said it would end legal uncertainty about the future of the islands and allow the UK and the US to continue running the Diego Garcia base well into the next century.
[Patel] asked me, would we be able to extend the lease? The answer is yes. Would we continue to have the autonomy of our operations for those allies? Absolutely yes. Are there safeguards in place to prevent foreign forces or others on the outer islands? Absolutely yes.
The Reform UK leader Nigel Farage told Doughty that he had visited Donald Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago this week and that there was “deep disquiet” amongst Trump’s allies over the deal.
But Doughty said the American security establishment was happy with the deal. Replying to Farage, he said:
With the greatest respect, [Farage] does not know the detail of what is agreed, he doesn’t know the detail that has been shared, he doesn’t know the detail that the national security apparatus of the United States has considered, and I am confident that he would have his concerns allayed when he sees the detail of this deal.
PMQs – snap verdict
Although much of the criticism directed at Keir Starmer over the Waspi women decision in the papers this morning is exaggerated and unfair (see 9.24am), there is a kernel of truth in it. Before the general election the Labour party did not say it would compensate the Waspi women. But it was not exactly candid about quite how unlikely a pro-Waspi final decision really was, and shadow cabinet ministers were happy to sound broadly sympathetic to the campaigners when a more honest message would have been awkward. As a result, Kemi Badenoch had a point in her opening question, when she said: “For years the prime minister and his cabinet played politics with the Waspi women.”
She did not follow this through as effectively as she might have done. To make a prime minister squirm at PMQs, it is often best to ask an uncomfortable question over and over again. Badenoch never uses this technique, even though it might have worked well here. She did, though, ask a direct factual question, about pension credit claims, and she made Starmer look a bit evasive when he did not give a direct answer. But, on pension credit, she chose to then pursue the argument that a higher take-up rate would cost the Treasury more money, when instead she might have been better off pointing out that the government’s attempts to alleviate pensioner poverty by encouraging more people to claim pension credit don’t seem to be working
On pensions, Badenoch also admitted the Conservative had no intention of ever paying compensation to the Waspi women. (“Now they admit we were right all along.”) This confirms that the tell-voters-what-they-want-to-hear slipperiness she was attacking Starmer for is actually a general politicians’ trait, not an inherent Labour vice. But given that Starmer is prime minister, it is understandable why he is getting the most criticism for this today.
That said, although the early Badenoch questions were a bit more effective than some of her previous PMQs performances have been, none of what she said seemed to bother Keir Starmer that much. Some of the other Waspi criticism, for example from Diane Abbott, might have mattered more.
For her final three questions, Badenoch returned to the budget, and the national insurance rise, or “jobs tax” as she calls it. These exchanges sounded familiar, and when she ended with a line about how Starmer had to tell the truth, he had an effective put-down when he used that as cue to start “telling the truth” about the £22bn black hole in the government accounts (even though, technically, the true figure might actually be a bit different).
Luke Evans (Con) asks if he welcomes the fact that Chris Middleton’s charity song about the winter fuel payment cut will beat Ed Davey’s song in the contest for Christmas number one, proving the Lib Dems can never win.
Starmer says he is not going to adjudicate between rival songs.
Will Forster (Lib Dem) asks if there will be an independent review into the circumstances that allowed Sara Sharif to be murdered.
Starmer says it is important to learn any lessons, particularly in relation to home schooling. There is a process going on, he says. He says an announcement will be made in due course.
Starmer: UK simply cannot afford Waspi women payout
Diane Abbott (Lab) says “we” promised the Waspi women they would get justice. Does Starmer understand why they feel let down?
Starmer says of course he understands. But 90% of women knew their pension age was going up. He says, in the circumstances, he cannot justify spending money on compensation.
UPDATE: Abbott said:
The Waspi women fought one of the most sustained and passionate campaigns for justice that I can remember, year in, year out. We did promise them that we would give them justice. I understand the issue about the cost but does the prime minister really understand how let down Waspi women feel today?
And Starmer replied:
I do understand the concern, of course I do.
The research is clear that 90% of those impacted did know about the change and in those circumstances the taxpayer simply can’t afford the burden of tens of billions of pounds of compensation, but I do understand the concern.
Richard Foord (Lib Dem) says Russia may use any ceasefire in Ukraine as an example to re-arm. What will the government do to stop this if there is a ceasefire.
Starmer says the UK will continue to support Ukraine, putting it in “the strongest possible”, whether there are negotiations or not.
Dave Doogan (SNP) says the Waspi women decision is another example of Starmer saying one thing and doing another. Does he understand why the people of Scotland now view him with such contempt?
Starmer says the SNP are now sitting at the back of the chamber, because they lost so many MPs at the election (a line he has used several times before in response to SNP criticism).