WASPIs' Ten Thousand payment

Well fortunately for me when I was made redundant at 60, I could choose not to have to find another job in favour of helping look after my grandchildren, as I’d always planned to do if needed when I retired.

But I paid my annual WASPI dues because I knew that not everyone was so lucky and that some women had their lives turned upside down by the maladministration of the DWP. I had my eyes opened by attending the WASPI demos and meeting women whose lives weren’t so easy.

Even from my own circle, I can give you an example. A woman with severe arthritis who gave in her notice because she was struggling, thinking she didn’t have long to go till her pension kicked in. Believe it or not, it was a shock to her to find out too late that she had 6 more years to go before she could get her pension. Shortly after that she found herself a widow, with children still in education, and forced to work three minimum wage cleaning jobs for an agency while in constant pain. She was treated appallingly by the agency and by benefits staff on top of this.

Perhaps just take a look at the WASPI website if you want more case histories.

Nannynoodles

Interesting that no one has yet come forward to say what they would have done differently if they had received individual notification.

Me personally, nothing. At 40 or 50 I was one who had no interest in pensions at all, (despite having an accountant who spelt it out regularly). To be honest, it was only a few months ago that I actually did the calculation for my own upcoming state pension. And it was only by reading GN that I realised the unfairness towards some groups of retirees. It seems wrong to me.
I'm not proud of my ignorance or insouciance, neither am I thick. I have no idea whether I was notified or not. There must be quite a few like me.

I would have purchased more 'past added years' for my occupational pension.

Nannynoodles

Interesting that no one has yet come forward to say what they would have done differently if they had received individual notification.

I had AVG's put in place, when I realised. (No notification). I got a nice lump sum, when I retired on health grounds and had to wait until I was sixty six to get my pension.. It allowed me to adapt my home to make is disabled friendly.

Interesting that no one has yet come forward to say what they would have done differently if they had received individual notification.

Nannynoodles

A lot of the discussion and disagreement is around whether or not individuals were notified individually about the changes.
I personally was aware for quite some years, I can’t remember exactly how I knew but I did.
My question is though if you had of known earlier what would you have done differently to prepare? Most of us just went to work, saved what we could and just got on with life the best we could, I didn’t do anything differently and neither have any of my friends. A few of us may have carried on working a few years longer but they may have done this anyway, and as I have previously said, it brings us into line with men which can only be fair in this day and age.

I would also be interested I hearing what women would do differently if that had known earlier . I couldn't have afforded to pay any more into my private pension. Of course if i now had my SP too I would be much better off financially but I had the option of continuing to work FT until 67 . For many of my friends, working longer has given them a larger income between 60 and the age they will claim Sp , and they have also added additional years to their pension pots .

This from the Ombudsman report covers that:

123. DWP has told us that direct mailing required planning and 2009 was the earliest possible start date. It explained it needed to engage with suppliers to get detailed costings on the preferred option, which involved working with private companies and ‘relatively new’ IT systems. It also says due diligence was needed because of the significant sums of public money involved. Even now, with modern IT, DWP says, a mailing would have a lead in time of months rather than weeks.

124. DWP used its *CIS database to identify women to write to. It told us CIS went live in March 2005, was piloted for the first year, and enhancements were made between April 2005 and June 2008 to make it a more comprehensive source of customer data. It said that citizen data was not robust before the introduction of CIS, and this only gradually changed once CIS was introduced. It told us that, given CIS was continually improving, ‘it would have been strongly preferable not to conduct a mail-out at least prior to 2008’.

* CIS means Customer Information Systems

I have some anecdotal evidence which would back this up.

When my husband died in 2007, I was entitled to claim a widow's bereavement payment and a widow's bereavement allowance for 12 months. These are based on a husband's NIC. My husband had paid Class 1 NIC for 40 uninterrupted years with two large employers. He was working until the day he died. DWP claimed he did not exist. They claimed they had no records for him under his name or his NINO. I sent P60s. They continued to argue for a whole year that no records existed for him. Eventually, I asked my MP to intervene and DWP paid up but despite several requests for an explanation, they refused to say what had happened.

In 2008 DWP were only two years away from implementing the WASPI changes but had no robust method of contacting every woman affected to tell her precisely how she would be affected.

No excuse not to write to notify such a significant change. We've all paid our taxes and NI so they know where we were. I now receive regular updates from DWP. Why not back then?

Excellent post TinSoldier.

I think one of the issue with relying on letters is that they would have needed to sent to every woman ( and man ) every time an change in age was happening and may have caused more confusion than clarity . I am slightly younger than the WASPI age range and was aware of the impending changes since the late 1990s . If the age was still 60 I would now be receiving my state pension but fully support the equalisation of pension age . Just like men , we now need to continue to work if we cannot afford to retire at 60 . The real injustice is the historical affect of gender pay gap , the lack of affordable childcare and lack of access to workplace pensions , which has meant women have not had the ability to contribute enough to provide a suffient pension. For what is worth I think 67/ 68 is too old for the state pension for either sex . There are many jobs that do not lend themselves to an ageing workforce and many of these are the lower paid roles where the employee may be less able to afford to retire before SP age .

I suspect it was when Steve Webb was appointed Pensions Minister under the coalition government that things started to change. He seems be one minister who really understands the numbers c/f his comprehensive papers for Lane, Clark Peacock where his is now partner. He was the minister who introduced the triple lock. But maddyone's point is well made. The Pensions Act 2011 lead to a deliberate hiatus in notifying a whole cohort of women about the changes.

Equalisation was necessary to comply with an EEC directive which came into effect in 1978. We then had a change of government. The Tories came to power in 1979. Under them, nothing happened for sixteen years until the Pensions Act 1995. Another change of government in 1997 when Labour came to power. DWP knew in 2004 that publicity campaigns were not reaching the target audience but did nothing about it. Then another change of government in 2010 and the Pension Act 2011 extending the state pension age for everyone.

It took government until 2013 to tell some women about the 1995 and 2011 changes. By this time some were 58 or 59. Some it never planned to tell at all. Again, it's all in the Ombudsman's report.

1978 to 2013 is 35 years. Coincidentally, it’s the same number of years of contributions younger WASPI women needed to qualify for a new state pension. In other words, government delay and maladministration was as long as the average woman’s working life.

Over those 35 years, we had no less than 33 pensions ministers under various titles, almost one for every year. It’s what Rory Stewart had described in his book Politics on the Edge. Ministers are barely in post long enough to get to grips with the issues they are responsible for before they are moved (or removed) from office.

Successive governments faffed around for 35 years while some women were barely given a year’s notice of changes that significantly affected their retirement plans and their incomes.

A lot of the discussion and disagreement is around whether or not individuals were notified individually about the changes.
I personally was aware for quite some years, I can’t remember exactly how I knew but I did.
My question is though if you had of known earlier what would you have done differently to prepare? Most of us just went to work, saved what we could and just got on with life the best we could, I didn’t do anything differently and neither have any of my friends. A few of us may have carried on working a few years longer but they may have done this anyway, and as I have previously said, it brings us into line with men which can only be fair in this day and age.

I think I saw something on the television news about women having to work longer in order to claim their pension. I don’t recall being informed on the news what exactly that would mean for individual women. I received a letter, as I have said previously, and I was in my fifties when I received it. It informed me that I would receive my state pension at 61 rather than 60, although only three years previously my sister received her pension at 60. I wasn’t informed by letter that my new pension age would be 63 after further changes had been implemented. I was rather surprised therefore when I checked my state pension entitlement online and discovered the new date when my pension would actually be paid. I was in the lucky position of having a professional pension and so I wasn’t unduly worried about it. It was only when it became obvious how many women would be affected and so disadvantaged that I really thought about it. In my opinion all this might have been avoided if the initial changes had been allowed to run, rather the hugely quicker changes brought forward by Cameron, Clegg, and Osborne that have caused all the problems and dissatisfaction. They all swanned off to get on with their hugely privileged lives whilst many WASPI women remain extremely disadvantaged.

We keep arguing about this but the fact is that the DWP has admitted they did not do all they could have done to advise women of the changes. The Ombudsman, after years of painstaking andcomprehensive research, has found the DWP guilty of maladministration. All the evidence is there in his report.

The Working Dogs campaign ran from January 2001 to March 2004. Adverts were placed in national and local press, on postcards, and shown in cinemas and on television.

It was not the entirety of the campaign but by 2004, DWP knew and had admitted to knowing that this and other campaigns were not reaching the target audience.

Extract from the Ombudsman’s report:

116. An internal DWP memo from April 2007 described the 2007 research findings as ‘depressing reading’. The memo reflects on the lack of progress since 2004 and the prospect of future complaints from women. It states:

‘You floated the idea of contacting the Ombudsman to get a feel for how she would react to claims from women saying they had never been told or were not aware that state pension age is increasing. In the light of the lack of upward movement from our 43% base figure from 3 years ago, we suggest putting this off until we can explain our strategy from here to get the message over. If we go now, we face being painted into a corner. Despite a really strong defensive brief, we still have 50% “ignorance levels” with three years to go. The Ombudsman’s first question will be what are you proposing to do about it?’

117. A ministerial submission from December 2007 shows DWP knew people did not understand the impact of the changes for them. It says: ‘One of the key issues is that whilst some women do in fact have an awareness of the impending change, they do not understand how this relates specifically to them’.

That specifically is crucial to this - why we should all have been told individually because our individual date of birth is crucial to how we were affected; whether you would have to wait an extra day for your pension as was the case for someone born on 5 May 1950 or had to six years for those born between 6 October 1954 and 5 April 1960.

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7f02e640f0b62305b84929/spa-timetable.pdf

As I have written in previous posts, the DWP had admitted to not having the IT and information systems in place at that time to notify women individually.

This was a government failing.

mae13

I remember the cartoon of 2 dogs sat on a beach, vaguely mentioning pensions in a roundabout way. I think it was in one of the broadsheets many years ago. That was the entirety of the "campaign" to inform up to 4 million women about the pension changes - in "the name of gender equality."Yeah, sure.
That's how women are regarded by our politicians. Dogs.
And to all on this thread who have smugly noted "well,I got a letter. I knew ALL about the changes"........why the hell didn't you inform your sisters then?

What exactly do you think those of us who knew about it (and not through receiving letters) should have done to inform others? I have no knowledge of the cartoon you mention so obviously that was not, as you allege, the entirety of the information campaign.

I was aware of the news in the 1990s that we would not get our pension at 60 but did not know details. I don't recall seeing any more about it until around 2010 when the first women approached delayed pension age and I was able to work out when I would get my pension.
I got a letter when I was 60 to inform me that I would not be getting my pension then. That was the only official notification I had.

Callistemon21

chrissie13

I have just seen there is a petition started 'Provide all pensioners born before April 1951 with the new State Pension'.

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/656038

Surely this should be April 1953, not 1951, or am I missing something?

Perhaps because those women born between 1951 and 1953 already have an official campaign which is very well publicised?

Callistemon21 - I am one of the women born between 1951 and 1953, but I have not heard of that campaign, only the general waspi one, which is widely publicised. I do think it is unfair that we had to work longer than older women but only get the old pension rate.

I remember the cartoon of 2 dogs sat on a beach, vaguely mentioning pensions in a roundabout way. I think it was in one of the broadsheets many years ago. That was the entirety of the "campaign" to inform up to 4 million women about the pension changes - in "the name of gender equality."Yeah, sure.
That's how women are regarded by our politicians. Dogs.
And to all on this thread who have smugly noted "well,I got a letter. I knew ALL about the changes"........why the hell didn't you inform your sisters then?

Perhaps those of us who had 35 years of contributions under the old system should receive a full pension instead of pro rata.
39 years were required for women, 44, I believe, for men.

chrissie13

I have just seen there is a petition started 'Provide all pensioners born before April 1951 with the new State Pension'.

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/656038

Surely this should be April 1953, not 1951, or am I missing something?

I suspect that petitioner Andrew Mills is assuming (as many others do) that everybody who falls under the new state pension rules receives the full amount. They do not.

It is still based on the number of years one has paid NIC. You need 35 full years to receive the full amount. If you only have 10 years (the minimum required) you will receive £58.20 p.w. Twenty years will pay you £116.40 p.w. and so on.

The higher new rate takes into account the fact that that is no longer a Graduated Pension or an Additional State Pension that people under the old system could pay into.

The maximum additional state pension you can get in 2023-24 under the old system is £204.68 (owned or inherited). That's on top of whatever pensiion someone has earned based on contribution years.

www.moneyhelper.org.uk/en/pensions-and-retirement/state-pension/how-does-the-state-pension-work-and-how-much-might-you-get

It is entirely possible for people under the old system to be receiving a much higher pension than the new rate.

And, yes, he has also failed to take into account that pension ages for women were different.

chrissie13

I have just seen there is a petition started 'Provide all pensioners born before April 1951 with the new State Pension'.

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/656038

Surely this should be April 1953, not 1951, or am I missing something?

Perhaps because those women born between 1951 and 1953 already have an official campaign which is very well publicised?

I have just seen there is a petition started 'Provide all pensioners born before April 1951 with the new State Pension'.

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/656038

Surely this should be April 1953, not 1951, or am I missing something?

TinSoldier Thank you for the links- it’s a lot to process and understand- but highlights the Government’s failures and lack of accountability in giving advance notifications to millions of women who were not informed of pension age changes 😳

I agree TinSoldier. I too have read the Ombudsman’s report and it certainly sheds light on the shambolic way in which the DWP managed (or mismanaged) things. People who dismiss the issue by saying ‘women should have known’ should read the entire report, and should also have empathy for the millions of women badly affected rather than ‘victim blaming’ them.

You are absolutely right Shirls. I keep saying this but I urge people to take an hour or so to read the Ombudsman's findings on the maladministration which took place.

www.ombudsman.org.uk/publications/womens-state-pension-age-our-findings-department-work-and-pensions-communication/what-did-happen

Read all the links in the sidebar too.

The DWP knew in 2004 that its publicity campaign was not reaching its target audience. They were spending tens of millions on these campaigns - £10 million alone on the offensive Working Dogs campaign. Two dogs sitting on a beach with speech bubbles. Really?

DWP was very reluctant to undertake the work of notifying everybody affected by the change. The report explains why. I know that I am in a cohort of women who were never notified.

Things are different now. We receive a letter each year telling us what our pension is going up by. We receive a letter each year telling us what Winter Fuel Allowance we will receive. These letters go out to 13 million pensioners.

But back in the 2000s the DWP could not tell 3.5 million women because they claim they did not have the funds or the IT systems to do so and that, anyway, their information systems were incomplete.

I find this extaordinary as I know that other government departments e.g. HMRC were digitising taxpayer records in the early 1980s.

What it boils down to is that government was not prepared for what it wanted to implement. They should have had robust systems in place before they set out to equalise the pension age.

When you read the report you will see that 18 years elapsed between the Pension Act 1995 and the last noted tranche of letters alleged to have been sent in 2013 - except the DWP have no record of who they did and didn't send letters to. Eighteen years. It must be some kind of record for incompetence.