Sir Keir Starmer has defended a decision not to compensate women affected by changes to their retirement age – saying doing so would “burden” the taxpayer.

The prime minister said he understood the concerns of the Women Against State Pension Inequality – often known as Waspi women – but their demands were not affordable.

He was speaking after Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall issued an apology for a 28-month delay in sending out letters to those born in the 1950s impacted by state pension changes.

However, she said she doesn’t accept that compensation should be paid.

Follow politics latest: Reaction to Waspi decision

Ms Kendall said the “great majority of women knew the state pension age was increasing” and that a state-funded pay-out wouldn’t be “fair or value for taxpayers’ money'”.

The announcement was branded a “day of shame” by the Liberal Democrats, who accused the Labour government of “turning its back on millions of pension-age women who were wronged”.

In the mid-1990s, the government passed a law to raise the retirement age for women over a 10-year period to make it equal with men.

The coalition government then sped up the timetable as part of its cost-cutting measures.

The Waspi group say millions suffered financially as they were not given sufficient warning to prepare for the later retirement age.

Earlier this year, an investigation by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) found that thousands of women may have been adversely impacted by failures to adequately inform people of the change.

The watchdog suggested that women should receive compensation of between £1,000 and £2,950 – but the findings were not legally binding.

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Ms Kendall said paying that would have cost up to £10.5 billion, which is not “fair or proportionate”.

She also said she did not agree that sending letters earlier would have made a difference, saying research given to the Ombudsman showed “only around a quarter of people who are sent unsolicited letters actually remember receiving them or reading them“.

However she did accept there was maladministration in communicating the changes and vowed to “learn all the lessons” so it did not happen again.

Speaking later to journalists, Ms Kendall said “real and concrete actions” were coming out of the report, including a “detailed action plan to make sure those sorts of delays never happen again”.

Speaking to reporters after the announcement, Sir Keir said: “I do understand, of course, the concern of the Waspi women. But also I have to take into account whether it’s right at the moment to impose a further burden on the taxpayer, which is what it would be.”

The Waspi campaign group hit out at the decision on X, reminding Ms Kendall that she had previously called for a “fair solution for all affected”.

Angela Madden, chairwoman of Waspi, said refusing to compensate them was a “bizarre and totally unjustified move”.

She added: “An overwhelming majority of MPs back Waspi’s calls for fair compensation and all options remain on the table. Parliament must now seek an alternative mechanism to force this issue on to the order paper so justice can be done.”

This may be as big a political blunder as chancellor’s winter fuel cut

Jon Craig

Chief political correspondent

@joncraig

When Liz Kendall declared in the Commons there’ll be no compensation for the so-called WASPI women, there were shouts of “shame!” from MPs.

And no wonder. Could this be as big a political blunder as Rachel Reeves axing winter fuel payments for pensioners? Potentially, yes, given the furious backlash already.

Yes, compensation was promised by former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and his shadow chancellor John McDonnell in the run-up to the December 2019 general election.

Mr McDonnell promised a £58 billion compensation scheme designed to end a “historic injustice” and said a “debt of honour” was owed to women born in the 1950s.

And yes, Sir Keir Starmer fought this year’s election as a changed Labour Party. And no, there was no repeat of the Corbyn-McDonnell pledge in this year’s election manifesto.

But as recently as 2022 the prime minister told a caller in a radio phone-in: “This is a real injustice. We need to something about it.”

In 2019, when she was in Mr Corbyn’s shadow cabinet, Angela Rayner said the Tory government “stole this money” from women born in the 1950s and Labour would “right that injustice”.

But not only that, Liz Kendall herself attended a WASPI campaign event in 2019 and said: “This injustice can’t go on. I have been a longstanding supporter of the WASPI campaign…”

No surprise then, that many of Labour’s newly-elected MPs now feel betrayed. “It feels a bit like we assembled this enormous coalition at the election and now we’re just intent to taking an axe to it piece by piece,” one new Labour MP told Sky News.

If it was an injustice in 2019 and in 2022, surely it’s still an injustice? Should other groups battling against injustice – like sub-postmasters and infected blood victims – be worried now?

Labour MPs were among those who criticised the decision in the House of Commons.

Gareth Snell, for Stoke-on-Trent Central, said today was a “sad moment” and asked the government to re-think its position if the economy improves.

Brian Leishman, for Alloa and Grangemouth, said he was “appalled” at the refusal to compensate the women, calling it “an incredible let down”.

The government will offer compensation to Post Office Capture victims – while refusing to rule out blanket exoneration for those convicted.

In an exclusive interview with Sky News, Post Office minister Gareth Thomas said his department is “working at pace” and is committed to providing redress as quickly as possible.

Capture accounting software, which predates the scandal-hit Horizon IT system, was used by sub-postmasters in their branches between 1992 and 1999.

Under Horizon, hundreds of sub-postmasters were wrongly prosecuted between 1999 and 2015.

Earlier this year the government-commissioned Kroll report found there was a “reasonable likelihood” that Capture caused accounting losses and errors, although the report did not make any conclusions about the safety of criminal convictions.

A number of sub-postmasters were convicted of theft and false accounting while using the Capture IT system in the 1990s.

“This is the first time the government has confirmed it is going to offer redress,” Gareth Thomas told Sky News.

“We recognise that there were significant problems for some sub-postmasters, at least some of whom used the Capture software, and had real difficulties in their branches.

“We’re now going to work at pace across government, and with the Post Office and sub-postmasters directly, to try to understand how many people were affected and how we can offer redress most effectively going forward.”

He insisted that once as much information as possible had been received from the Post Office the government would “be able to work through on a [redress] scheme”.

When asked repeatedly, however, if “blanket exoneration” was off the table, Mr Thomas refused to directly answer.

He said instead that the “first stage” was to “work with the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC)”.

Mr Thomas added: “It’s the reason why we’ve asked the Post Office to go through all its records just to try and help us understand firstly how many people were affected in total by using Capture software, how many people saw problems in their branch, and also to try to understand how many people were then convicted.”

“That’s got to be the first stage,” he continued. “We’re working at pace and expect the Post Office to be working at a pace to make those judgements.

“And we will get that information to CCRC as soon as we can – and we’ll make a judgement from that.”

Hundreds of sub-postmasters who were wrongly convicted of stealing because of faults in the Horizon system, introduced after Capture, were exonerated through legislation earlier this year.

Sky News has previously revealed that the CCRC is looking into a number of Capture cases but said that the older the case, the more difficult it could be to determine.

Mr Thomas admitted he was also “worried about the level of information” available “given the length of time since Capture was used”.

He emphasised the Post Office had been instructed “as a matter of urgency” to look into its records and pass on as much information as possible.

The minister also insisted that the government has “a responsibility to work as fast as we can… and we are determined to do that”.

On potential redress schemes, the minister also said the government has learned from past mistakes on compensation.

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Mr Thomas said some Horizon sub-postmasters had not been involved “early enough” in the process previously.

“That’s certainly something we don’t want to happen this time round,” he said.

“I’m now actively talking to sub-postmasters and legal representatives so that we can get redress offered ultimately as quickly as is feasible.”

Wages are rising far faster than expected after a year of slowing, official figures show.

Average pay rose sharply, by 5.2%, in the three months to October, according to data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

A month earlier wages had been growing by 4.4% including bonuses and 4.9% excluding bonuses.

The increase comes as a surprise – economists polled by the Reuters news agency had forecast increases of 4.6% and 5%.

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It follows more than a year of slowing rises and comes thanks to private sector pay rises, the ONS said.

Private sector pay grew by 5.4%, compared to 4.3% for the public sector.

Good jobs news could be bad for mortgages

There was no change to the unemployment rate which remained at 4.3% as expected, the ONS also announced.

The number of people on UK payrolls fell by 35,000 to 30.4 million between October and November, although this is subject to revision.

The ONS added that the number of vacancies fell by 31,000 to 818,000 in the three months to November.

It’s good news for workers seeking improved pay but may be bad news for people remortgaging in the new year.

High wages had been a concern for interest rate-setters at the Bank of England who seek to bring down inflation, which rose to 2.3% in October.

Gora Suri, an economist at PwC UK, said the rise in earnings growth shows that inflation pressures remain in the economy.

He said: “Despite the considerable disinflation we have seen in the UK economy over the last two years, these underlying inflationary pressures remain.

“This means that the Bank of England is highly likely to keep interest rates on hold at its next meeting on Thursday, before resuming rate cuts in the new year.”

A note of caution

The accuracy of this ONS data has been called into question numerous times in recent months.

The exact numbers of people at work are unknown in part due to fewer people answering the phone when the ONS calls.

Governor of the Bank of England Andrew Bailey described this as “a substantial problem”.

He said last month: “I do struggle to explain when my fellow [central bank] governors ask me why the British are particularly bad at this.

“The Bank, alongside other users, including the Treasury, continue to engage with the ONS on efforts to tackle these problems and improve the quality of UK labour market data.”

The ONS itself said it continued “to advise caution” when interpreting the data.

“Estimates of change should be treated with additional caution,” it said.