The decision to equalise the State Pension age at 66 for all hit around 3.8 million women born in the 1950s. Almost 100,000 have died before getting any State Pension at all, campaigners say, and more die every day.

The Women Against State Pension Injustice (Waspi) campaign has argued that the decision to raise the State Pension age was badly communicated and many women did not realise what was happening until too late as a result.

In July, campaigners received a boost when the Parliamentary & Health Service Ombudsman ruled that the Department for Work & Pensions (DWP) did not give them adequate notice of the impending changes.

The Ombudsman said they suffered “maladministration” because the DWP should have informed affected women of changes in December 2006, but delayed until April 2009.

It has no power to refund lost pensions or pay damages, but can recommend the Government gives the women compensation.

Waspi campaign 2018 chair Hilary Simpson is confident that the Ombudsman will recommend compensation, and said there is no need for the Government to wait until its investigations are complete.

“Ministers should start making arrangements to pay it now, before more and more women die. This would be the decent thing to do, the humane thing to do, the right thing to do. It’s time for deeds, not words.”

Waspi 2018 figures suggest that 82,000 women died before reaching the new State Pension age between 2010 and 2020 (the most recent year for which data is available).

In 2020, around 15,600 died before reaching age 66 and claiming their State Pension. This works out as 42 women a day, 300 a week or 1,300 a month.

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Simpson said the Waspi 2018 figures, based on statistics from the House of Commons Library, may be a conservative estimate. “Either way, they are shocking enough, as 1950s women are dying rapidly before they reach their revised State Pension age.”

On Wednesday, she will present her case at the All-Party Parliamentary Group on State Pension Inequality for Women. 

Simpson added: “We want to shout them from the rooftops so everybody knows the truth.”

The DWP says the decision to equalise the State Pension age for men and women was taken more than 25 years ago, as a long-overdue move towards gender equality. 

It insists that the move has been supported by both the High Court and Court of Appeal, which found it acted entirely lawfully and did not discriminate on any grounds.