Scottish Secretary Ian Murray has rejected claims that Labour has betrayed women who were expecting compensation for the changes made to the state pension age.
Mr Murray said meeting the cost could not be justified even though he understood the women’s frustration.
His reaction contrasted with growing dissent among Labour MPs who confronted Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall on WhatsApp over the decision and warned that it will carry a political cost.
Ms Kendall told MPs this week that the government would not be making payments, despite the parliamentary and health service ombudsman ruling in favour of the Women Against State Pension Inequality (Wapi) campaigners.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, his deputy Angela Rayner, Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar, all took part in photoshoots with Waspi campaigners while in opposition.
But all, apart from Mr Sarwar, insisted this week that the government could not afford to compensate them. Mr Sarwar yesterday said he disagreed with the decision and called for targeted support.
A Waspi campaigner protesting outside Holyrood today said: “Labour is done. We won’t vote for them again”.
Further backbench anger spilled over at Westminster where the Prime Minister was accused of failing to learn from the backlash over the winter fuel cut for most pensioners.
Labour MSP Richard Leonard joined the Holyrood protestors (pic: Terry Murden)
Michelle Scrogham, MP for Barrow & Furness, said: “I was elected under a banner of integrity. I stood shoulder to shoulder with these women and promised to fight for them as did many of us. My integrity is worth more than this.”
Olivia Blake, the MP for Sheffield Hallam, wrote: “I fear the political cost of this will outweigh the financial cost of compensation significantly.”
Labour MSP Richard Leonard has also sided with the Waspi campaigners and today joined MSPs from other parties at a demonstration outside the Scottish parliament.
The Scottish Secretary defended the government’s decision. “It just wasn’t justifiable to spend £10.5bn in a very difficult financial landscape,” he said, while adding that he “could understand why the women are frustrated.”
Linda Carmichael, chair of Waspi Scotland, said the verdict was “disappointing”. She said: “It makes you wonder what the ombudsman is really there for.”
Sir Keir: I have no regrets
Sir Keir Starmer told MPs today that he has no regrets about his first five months in office and would have done nothing differently,
Appearing before the liaison committee of select committee heads, the Prime Minister stood by the decision to impose inheritance tax on farms and remove winter fuel payments for pensioners not claiming credits.
He said the situation he found when taking power was “worse than I thought in every respect”.
Asked by committee chairwoman Dame Meg Hillier if he would have done anything differently, he replied: “No. We have had to do tough stuff, we are getting on with it and I am very pleased to be delivering from a position of power, rather than going around the division lobbies losing every night.”
On the decision to impose inheritance tax on farms, he said: “What we tried to do … was to protect the family farm, putting in a high threshold for inheritance tax for farms, which means that if you take the figures on the estates for farms, the vast majority of them are unaffected.”
He argued that older people would be better off as a result of the budget, and highlighted the triple lock on pensions.
“We wouldn’t be able to maintain [it] if we didn’t stabilise the economy, which is why we did what we needed to do with the budget,” he said.
