Iqbal Mohamed

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Murrison. I am a new Member, and one of the first emails I received was from a WASPI woman. She followed up with a further email, which—to take as little time as possible—I will read out. “I need to vent my frustration and anger at the Government’s announcement yesterday that they will not accept the ombudsman’s recommendation to pay WASPI women some compensation for maladministration. They were in support of this whilst they were in opposition. As my elected MP, please can you make it known that, as a lifelong supporter of the Labour Party, I am totally disgusted by this volte-face. I am a WASPI woman who fortunately worked for many years as a teacher and therefore have an occupational pension. I have not been campaigning for myself but for the many women who were in low paid jobs or had caring responsibilities and were not in a position to have a private pension and were therefore relying on a state pension from the age of 60. I understand the equalisation of the ages but, as the ombudsman stated, many women were unaware of the increase in age, in my case two increases. I had one letter about it. Even women who knew about it were often not in a position to ‘make appropriate financial adjustments to their planning.’ The people making these decisions are in fortunate positions themselves but I was relying on their understanding and compassion for others who are less able to make up the circa £48,000 which I reckon to have ‘lost’. The government has let WASPI women down. We are not in a great position to protest about this. I am asking you to make the protest on our behalf please.”