Exclusive:
A huge survey of almost 11,000 affected 1950s-born women shows support for Reform UK has shot up to 24%, while support for the Conservatives stands at 13% and a mere 7% back Labour
WASPI women are flocking to Nigel Farage’s party amid a massive “betrayal” from Labour over compensation.
A huge survey of almost 11,000 affected 1950s-born women shows support for Reform UK has shot up to 24%, while support for the Conservatives stands at 13% and a mere 7% back Labour. Some 24% of WASPI women voters are undecided about how they will vote and 8% will not vote at all.
Asked how they voted in this year’s election, 30% of the WASPI women polled said they backed Labour, 18% supported the Tories and 15% voted for Reform UK.
Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall last week stunned MPs by refusing to pay compensation to more than 3.5 million women who lost out on state pension payments when their retirement age was raised. It came after a number of senior figures, including Ms Kendall, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves backed the campaign in opposition.
Elsewhere the polling showed a dismal 82% of WASPI women believe Labour “does not care” about them. Three quarters of affected women (74%) said any decision on compensating WASPI women should now be taken away from ministers and handed directly to Parliament.
The Liberal Democrats have said they could force a Commons vote on the issue when MPs return to Westminster in January. Reports suggest up to 100 Labour MPs could vote against the government’s decision to reject compensation. WASPI carried out its polling in the three days after the government’s announcement as well as for about a week before it.
WASPI chair Angela Madden said: “The findings show the stark electoral price of Labour’s betrayal of WAPSI women to ignore the findings of the independent Parliamentary Ombudsman. With overwhelming numbers of furious Labour MPs backing fair compensation for WASPI women, the Prime Minister must urgently change course and deliver on his previous commitments.” She told the Mirror last week that legal experts will be working over Christmas looking at grounds for a judicial review of the government’s decision.
Commons leader Lucy Powell on Sunday said she “can’t see” the Government revisiting the issue of WASPI women. She said: “For women at this pension age, the triple-lock is now really boosting the value of pension… we’ve had to look at the report of the ombudsman and take two decisions. Was the recompense for that particular miscommunication back in 2004, was that proportionate? And we found that it wasn’t.
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“And is it the right use of public money at this stage? Of course I recognise that over many years for these women, they do feel that they’ve been hard done by. But it wasn’t in our manifesto at this election. It was in 2019, and we lost that election in 2019 because people didn’t feel we could afford all the promises we put in our manifesto.”
::: WASPI’s SurveyMonkey poll of affected 1950s-born women received 10,994 responses between December 11 – 20, 2024.
