Back to 60/Waspi Women

Actually, DH reached 65 the same week as I hit 60. We always assumed we would retire together, with our pensions. He’s had his for four and a half years now and I’ve still eighteen months to wait.

And don’t get me started on the bus pass he’s had since he turned 60 (and that I would have had too if we lived in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, London, etc).

Even now, women’s pension income in the U.K. is 40% lower than men’s.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/a1ff867a-d84f-11e8-a854-33d6f82e62f8

I’m so glad I didn’t take the option of the married woman’s stamp when it was offered - those that did are presumably even worse off than those who have always paid a full stamp.

I vaguely remember reading that when the women’s pension age was put at 60 in 1940/2? the thinking was that men usually married women younger than themselves and so this would enable them to retire closer together. Of course a lot less women used to have independent state pensions and this was encouraged by the married woman’s ‘stamp’.

Oh, fancy that, twiglet77. ? I remember the fact that we would retire at 60 being given as justification of women being routinely paid less than men.

It was also the reason why women paid at a higher rate than men into one of my company pension schemes. The one that was embezzled by its trustees.

I’m all for (fair and gradual) equalisation of the state pension age. Nobody’s said they aren’t. But we have been landed with the consequences of an unfair and far too abrupt rise after having had to put up with years of inequality.

I went to school with sisters born 12 months apart to the day. The older one will get her state pension 3 years before her sister. How can this be equality?

I'm a 1956 woman and expect to get State Pension at 66. Plenty of people involved in the decisions and legislation that led to this share the views of my brother (70 and single), that not only do "most women have easier jobs" (at least those in manual work), and "don't work as much overtime as men", women have a longer life expectancy and therefore their State Pension Age should never have been lower that that of men, it should always have been higher!

I'm afraid my brother is right about everything, so this is one of many topics we no longer discuss.

It’s the very nature of pension schemes that not all will benefit. But it’s simply not true that our past NI contributions fund our current state pensions. It just doesn’t work like that. The point I was making about ‘silly’ was the outrageous comment about civil servants. The only people to be held responsible for this fiasco are the Ministers and MPs of the Coalition Government who voted for the 2011 legislation in the full knowledge of how it would impact that generation of women.

Completely agree with all you say Shoequeen53. It's been a complete shambles how it's been done though. I have not received any form of communication whatsoever about my state pension and agree with Chewbacca when she says about it being done deliberately.

Completely agree with you shoequeen, I had no problem with the state pension agreeing increased to 65. What I did have a problem with was receiving a letter, when I was 58, telling me that my state pension age was being increased to 62. I heard nothing more. It was sheer chance that a colleague suggested that I should check on line to see if that was still the case, just as I approached 62. That's when I found out it had been changed again to 64.5. I checked regularly for any changes for the next year or so and then, days before my 64th birthday, they changed it for a 3rd time to 65.5.

It makes me so cross that the increases were done insidiously; no formal letters or emails were sent and I can't help but think that that was deliberate. Had I been told, when I was 58, that I would actually have another 7.5 years before I received SRP, I'd have planned my finances completely differently; as it is, they did it incrementally and I'm now in a precarious financial position.

Equalising the pension age isn’t wrong. The way it’s been done is outrageously unfair to a generation of women. Some of us will take out more than we’ve paid in if we live long enough, many of us will take out significantly less. And my comment’s deemed “silly”.

It's interesting too that the rising longevity on which the new pension age timetable was drawn up has now stalled.

www.theguardian.com/society/2019/mar/07/life-expectancy-slumps-by-five-months

Compared with 2015, projections for life expectancy are now down by 13 months for men and 14 months for women.

None of us, suziewoozie? I'm sure we all know people who have not, or will not, live to collect any of their state pension. Such as the terminally ill woman I met on the first WASPI London demo. She was already in no doubt that she would not make her new state pension age, but was there battling for the rest of us.

Equalising the pension age was not wrong. None of us have paid enough in NI to cover what we get out in pension - especially as NI goes towards other benefits as well and some towards NHS. What was wrong was the 2011 Act and not having a proper system of notification.

Legalised robbery!

It's not a benefit either. I paid lots of money whilst working into both a private scheme and NI/PAYE.

Thank goodness I have a private pension. However, that should NOT come into the equation. At 60 I discovered I'd be almost 66 by the time my state pension was paid. Friends and relatives, by being born slightly earlier get £600+ a month more than I do. I get by but I know lots of women still in work, suffering from tiredness, ailments and so much that ageing often brings, who have no choice but to plough on.

It is robbery and if any private firm acted in such a way they'd have been shamed, sued and lost their case.

A loss of nearly £50000 in pension payments is disgraceful, but a nice little nest egg for the government.

The Pensions Act 2011 received Royal Assent on 3 November 2011. Section 1 brings forward the increase in the SPA to 66 to October 2020.
The legislation as originally presented to Parliament would have brought forward this increase more quickly, so that the SPA reached 66 by April 2020. However, when the legislation was before Parliament, concern was expressed at the impact of the revised timetable on those women who see their SPA increase by more than a year (in some cases by as much as two years) as a result. In the Second Reading debate in the House of Commons, Work and Pensions Secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, said the Government was committed to the SPA being equalised in 2018 and rising to 66 in 2020 but would work to “get the transition right”.
The Government amended the Bill at Report Stage to cap the maximum increase in the SPA at 18 months relative to the legislated timetable. The Opposition tabled amendments that would have retained the timetable in the Pensions Act 1995 for increasing women’s SPA to 65 by 2020 but then brought forward the increase from 65 to 66 to between 2020 and 2022. These were negatived on division. The Opposition voted against the Bill at Third Reading on the grounds that the Government amendments, although welcome, did not go far enough.

The above quote proves that the Government knew exactly what they were doing.

‘The phasing could only have been worked out by a bunch of incompetent civil servants who went out and got pissed at lunch time, returning to do the calculations in the afternoon’

This really is a silly comment. I could just as easily say that is was approved and voted for by Coalition Ministers and MPS off their heads on cocaine and alcohol. The truth is probably that they just couldn’t care less.

The detail was worked out by civil servants. Have a look at the phasing - it’s completely bonkers, there’s no rhyme or reason to it.

I do agree of course that the later changes to the 1995 Act were incredibly unfair in terms of the acceleration of change and rage cliff edge impact for certain women

Shoe I think it’s somewhat unfair to blame the civil servants. The legislation was passed by the coalition government and all the MPs and ministers who voted for it knew, or should have known, the impact the changes would have. The government were looking to save money and probably instructed the civil servants to come up with a scheme that provided the desired amount. The pension changes and the lack of information provided were political decisions not administrative ones.

Well said Shoequeen

I well remember the first legislation in 1995. I was 42 and my pension would be delayed by a year or so, it seemed reasonable at that point. It was in 2011 that I started getting really angry - how dare they move the goalposts on us twice? And with no notice whatsoever, I thought I was three years away from SPA at that point. No, it was now 64 years and three months.

The phasing could only have been worked out by a bunch of incompetent civil servants who went out and got pissed at lunch time, returning to do the calculations in the afternoon. Unfair, illogical and mendacious. The irony that, had I been born seven hours sooner, my pension date would have been three months earlier.

Sadly, as we all eventually get our pensions, most of us will forget the burning injustice and the bastards will get away with it.

I too am affected, I'm now 61 and had a very stressful job along with health issues, so called it a day at 58, if the goal posts hadn't been moved I probably would have gone to 60 but no way could I do what I was doing until the age of 66. I am now having to rely on husband (his SP has been put back only one year to 66 whilst I have been put back 6 years) and small bits of private pension. I feel robbed of £50,000 and very badly treated but am lucky that financially I can make it to 66 but may need to move to a smaller house in a cheaper area.
I read recently that psychologically our well-being has been very badly affected, something which I totally agree with, this needs taking into consideration when the whole picture is being looked at. I hold out very little hope for us whichever government is in power and consider this to be an absolute scandal the way it's all been handled.

1995 and 39 years old. Why would I need to know about the extended pension age. 2001 went back into nursing, working 37.5 hours plus University plus keeping house etc. Never saw these adverts that explained that you could get a leaflet. 2011 lost my husband. Too much going on as Executor and 2 devastated DDs. By 2015, according to my Student Nurse papers, I was retiring at 60. Tax man told me no, at 66. Gutted. Quit nursing at 60 as I was broken, got my NHS Pension, tiny widow pension as we were separated and a Carers Allowance for looking after my Mum. 3 years and 5 months to go ?

I was born in July 1955, I was aware of the change in State Retirement Age but have always resented the increase time scale. I was furious when the SPA was increased to 66. I took Early Retirement to look after DH, I was 5, he was 65. I have been a widow since 2013 & rely on a small Civil Service Pension & Benefits. I was never informed by DWP or saw the advert

Cleggie got his grubby hands on it during the coalition government. What a wheeze to accelerate the changes by 10y and impress Gideon.

So the students hated him for his back track on their loans and us WASPI women hated him for raiding our pensions.

The timetable was accelerated by the Pensions Act 2011. Passed by the Conservative government.