The Scottish Parliament has called for “compensation in full” for the WASPI (Women against state pension inequality) generation of state pensioners.
After a debate in Holyrood, the Scottish Government voted for the motion by 75 votes to zero, with 52 MSPs abstaining, including members from Scottish Labour.
Pressure is growing on the Government to decide on payouts for the 3.8 million women, with some MPs in Westminster calling for compensation of £10,000 or more.
The Labour group in Holyrood called for an amendment to the motion for it to state there “must be clarity on how any compensation scheme would operate” but this was defeated.
Conservative members wanted to change the motion to urge the UK Government to “respond in full” to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman’s (PHSO) report, but this was also rejected.
The PHSO report came out in March, outlining that the WASPI women should get compensation, and calling for payouts of between £1,000 and £2,950.
MPs backing the cause have secured a debate on the question later this month, on May 16.
A WASPI campaigner who lives in pensions minister Mel Stride’s constituency told Express.co.uk previously she was “disgusted” at his lack of action on the issue.
Mitzi Pouncy, 69, said: “I’ve written half a dozen times to Mel Stride, who happens to be my MP in this constituency that I live in.
“All I’ve got a couple of times is a bog standard round robin that he obviously sends to everybody. I’m just disgusted frankly.”
The WASPI pensioner had a major stroke when she was 63 which took her six months to recover from but she had to keep working for the next few years.
She said: “I couldn’t afford to retire. I applied for a PIP (Personal Independence Payment) so I could stay home and recuperate a bit better, but I couldn’t get that because I was upright.
“It was really, really hard. It was awful, devastating really.
“Now I’m an old age pensioner on the meanest pension in the civilised world, and the Government pleads poverty when they rifled the pension funds to the tune of £280billion.”
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