WASPI committee faces dissolution within days thanks to General Election campaign | Personal Finance | Finance
WASPI campaigners will lose a key group of supports as a Parliamentary committee backing the cause will soon cease to exist.
The Work and Pensions Committee last week backed calls for WASPI (Women Against State Pension Inequality) compensation, urging the Government to set out plans for compensation before the summer recess.
But its recommendations are now of little effect after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced there will be a General Election on July 4, with Parliament to dissolve next week.
Express.co.uk asked the committee what would happen to its recommendations. We received this response: “The recommendation from the committee still stands although the committee will cease to exist once Parliament is dissolved on Thursday next week.
“Any future committees aren’t bound by recommendations from past committees. It would then be up to any new one in the next Parliament to decide itself whether it wanted to pick up the issue and make its own recommendations.”
The committee this week scrutinised senior DWP bosses including Work and Pensions Secretary, Mel Stride, about the question of providing compensation.
Mr Stride told the MPs it was “quite a challenge” to balance the different aspects of the case as he considered whether to grant compensation.
The comittee also asked if he would take up their suggestion of providing a timetable for compensation by the start of summer recess, on July 23.
The pensions miniser said: “What I will do is thoroughly and actively go through the Ombudsman’s report and come to conclusions in a timely manner.
“What I don’t think I should be doing is entering into some kind of situation where that is being determined by an arbitrary deadline rather than having the time to do justice to what is a complicated matter.”
Individual members of the committee have also voiced their support for the WASPI cause on other occassions in Parliament.
Committee chair, Stephen Timms, spoke during a debate in the Commons about the issue, to voice his support for compensation.
He said during the debate there should be “flexibility” in how the compensation works, to reflect individual cases and how each WASPI woman was affected financially.
A report from the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman came out in March, recommending payouts of between £1,000 and £2,950, and urging Parliament to take up the issue.
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