Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has hinted at help for Waspi women who were hit by changes to the state pension age.
It comes after a report said the changes were not communicated adequately and people should receive an apology and compensation, possibly totalling billions of pounds.
The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) stated thousands of women who were born in the 1950s might have been impacted by the Department for Work and Pension’s “failure to adequately inform them” about the increase in the age of entitlement.
The DWP’s handling of the changes meant some women lost opportunities to make informed decisions about their finances, said the PHSO, which recommended individual compensation should be awarded between £1,000 and £2,950.
But the government has yet to respond to the report or revealed whether they would act on calls for payouts.
Politics live: Sunak launches Tories’ local election campaign
Campaigners from the group Women Against State Pension Inequality (Waspi) are calling on whoever wins the next general election to act swiftly on paying compensation.
Read more: What is a Waspi woman and what happened to them?
Asked about the report’s findings on Friday as he launched the Conservatives’ local election campaigns in Derbyshire, Mr Sunak said: “I know there will be a lot of interest in this matter and I completely get that.
“Hopefully people will appreciate we have only just received the report yesterday, it is very long and detailed, and the right thing for us to do is to go through it carefully and then come back with a considered and thoughtful response.”
But pushed on whether the government would make payments to the Waspi women, he said his “track record on these things is we do act”, pointing to the legislation to quash the convictions of sub-postmasters caught up in the Horizon IT scandal.
