Churchlawtonblue
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- 17 May 2009
- Messages
- 14,972
It's been widely reported that they were committed to paying , Rayner, Starmer and Reeves in the run up to the GE.It wasn't in the Labour manifesto, and prior to the election they very clearly refused to commit to compensation.
They'd already refused to commit to any compensation in interviews following the publication of the Ombudsman's report, and Reeves confirmed this at the election launch:
"...during a press conference before Labour released its manifesto Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves said: “There are lots of things that a Labour government might like to do, but the state of the public finances and the dire need of our public services means that we won’t be able to do everything that we might like to do.”
She went on to say: “We won’t put forward anything that is not fully costed and fully funded, and I haven’t set out any money for this [compensation for WASPI women].”
The reason I posted this is two fold. It's easy to criticise when not in power but when in power choices need to be made. Labour may be right to not pay it. Similarly the Conservatives may have been right to not have paid the pay awards last year. They were criticised by Labour at the time. Labour came to power and promptly paid the pay awards and then declared that this payment was part of the 22 billion black hole? Just assume that if the conservatives came into power next year they could then declare the pension compensation was part of a so called budget black hole.
This is not necessarily about pay awards or pension compensation, its about choices that all Governments have to make and cross party point scoring.
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