A CEREDIGION pensions campaigner was one of the many 1950s born women who flocked from all over the UK to a rally outside Parliament on Budget Day to promote their claim for compensation.

On 2 March the Parliamentary & Health Service Ombudsman ruled that women born in the 1950s were due compensation for the lack of notice they were given by successive governments that their state pensions had been delayed by several years.

Rachel Nicholas from Ceredigion Preseli Women Against State Pension Injustice (WASPI) travelled to London from Cardigan on Wednesday, 30 October.

She said: “It was a very emotional experience, joining thousands of purple-clad women who feel as strongly as I do that the injustice we have suffered must be compensated,” she said. “We held a minute’s silence for the WASPI women who have died. However, spirits were still high. I’m really glad I went.”

WASPI National Chair Hilary Simpson added: “Another Budget Day has come and gone with no news of compensation for 1950s women, despite our meeting the Pensions Minister in early September. It’s now over seven months since the Ombudsman published his recommendations. the Government must treat this as a matter of urgency; a WASPI woman is dying every 13 minutes.”

The women heard speeches of support from Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey, John McDonnell MP, Richard Burgon MP, Lord Bryn Davies (co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Women’s State Pension Inequality) and Jan Shortt, General Secretary of the National Pensioners’ Convention.

In 1995 and 2011 the government of the day introduced increases of the State Pension Age from 60 to 66 for women born in the 50s but did not notify them.

Some women were written to in 2009, 14 years after the first change, but letters were then stopped until 2012.

Many women received no notice at all. Those who did get letters had very little time to prepare for such a major change to their retirement plans.

This lack of notice has now been found by the Ombudsman to be maladministration for which compensation must be paid.

Ceredigion Preseli WASPI can be emailed at [email protected]