Up to 3.8 million Waspi women will not receive compensation, the work and pensions secretary has announced after a review of the decision.
The government reconsidered the case after a new document came to light, but has reiterated its earlier conclusion that no compensation should be paid.
Work and pensions secretary Pat McFadden has apologised that women born in the 1950s were not sent individual letters about their state pension changes earlier, but they will not receive compensation as a result of communications problems.
But MPs told the government the decision was “frankly wrong” and would feel like a “punch in the stomach” to those affected.
Making the announcement, Mr McFadden warned that a flat-rate compensation scheme would have cost more than £10bn.
He told the Commons there were “legitimate and sincerely held views” about whether the 2011 decision by the coalition government to accelerate the equalisation of the state pension age and the rise to the age of 66 “was the right thing to do or not”.
But the issue of compensation is based on “how changes to the state pension age were communicated”, not past policy decisions, the minister said.
He also told MPs the government accepted that individual letters about the changes could have been sent earlier.
“I am sorry that those letters were not sent sooner,” he said, but he added that ministers agreed with theParliamentary and Health Service ombudsman “that women did not suffer any direct financial loss from the delay”.
Before the election Labour pledged to compensate the women who had their retirement plans hit when their qualifying age for the state pension was delayed by six years to 66.
Women were given just 18 months to change their plans when the original legislation in 1995 said they should have received 10 to 15 years.
Last year the then work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall rejected calls for individuals affected to be awarded between £1,000 and £2,950 each, leading to a furious backlash among Labour MPs.
The Tories accused the government of performing a “series of handbrake turns” and claimed the government could have compensated the women by scrapping its controversial Chagos Islands deal or reforming the rising welfare bill.
Shadow Treasury minister Mark Garnier recalled previous pledges of support for the Waspi women by Labour MPs when the party was in Opposition.
“Before getting into government, it seemed that Labour MPs did think that an injustice had been done,” he said. “No wonder therefore that the Waspi women who were promised so much are so angry. The people who used to stand beside them have turned against them. If the government really believed that these women had faced a great injustice, they would have found a way to compensate them.”
Labour’s Rebecca Long-Bailey, the chairwoman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on State Pension Inequality for Women, said the decision was “frankly wrong”.
Steve Darling, the Liberal Democrat’s work and pensions spokesperson, accused the government of putting Waspi women’s pensions in the “too hard to do file” and said many would feel the result “as if it were a punch in the stomach”.
In November, Mr McFadden said his department would review the previously-announced policy not to compensate the women born in the 1950s.
He said “evidence” had emerged which had not be shown to his predecessor Ms Kendall, and had to be considered.
In 2023 the Ombudsman released the findings of its five-year investigation into the issue and, in a damning assessment of the DWP handling of the issue, warned of “maladministration”.
In a report it accepted that the Department for Work and Pension’s poor communication caused some women to lose “opportunities to make informed decisions”, although it made clear it did not believe it led to “direct financial loss”.
However, it ruled that affected women were due compensation of typically £1,000 to £2,950 each.