Goverment looking at compensation for WASPI women after new evidence

I hope the WASPI women get their compensation which was backed by Labour before they were elected but it is probably a forlorn hope.
A forgotten group who have lost out and are not even being considered for a pay-out are those born before April 1950. The old State Pension which these people get is over £50 a week less than the new State Pension for women born after April 1950. How is that fair?

I fail to see why a group of women who apparently never opened a newspaper, listened to the news, heard discussions at work or failed to attend pension information meetings think they are entitled to compensation because they were not able to retire five years earlier than everyone else, and nobody told them personally.
Very poor.

Please correct me if I am wrong. Women born before April 1950 were the last to receive the full pension at 60. Women born after that date had to wait until they were 65.

This comes up every so often. I ignore it. I seem to think Jeremy Corbyn said his governement would pay out for the WASPI women but not enough people voted for him.

Sarnia

I hope the WASPI women get their compensation which was backed by Labour before they were elected but it is probably a forlorn hope.
A forgotten group who have lost out and are not even being considered for a pay-out are those born before April 1950. The old State Pension which these people get is over £50 a week less than the new State Pension for women born after April 1950. How is that fair?

I wish people understood how the pensions work.

I am early 50s born so I can get either the new it the old pension, I get the old because it is worth more as I always worked and wasn't contracted out.

Indigo8

Please correct me if I am wrong. Women born before April 1950 were the last to receive the full pension at 60. Women born after that date had to wait until they were 65.

And they could contract out and get their private pension increased or not and get SERPs or S2P, I get S2P and elget more than new pension.

eazybee

I fail to see why a group of women who apparently never opened a newspaper, listened to the news, heard discussions at work or failed to attend pension information meetings think they are entitled to compensation because they were not able to retire five years earlier than everyone else, and nobody told them personally.
Very poor.

Is that because you are loaded?

Long established rules were changed very quickly.

It impacted and impacts many older women.

The sisterhood? Not for you then?

We had years to prepare for the first change less so for the second but it is the first they are talking about. Crazy.

The recommendations are for at least 10 years’ notice of changes to State Pension age. Yet the government only began to write to women in 2009, when thousands were already in their late fifties. And many women report receiving no notice at all

WASPI site, hope that helps.

StripeyGran

*The recommendations are for at least 10 years’ notice of changes to State Pension age. Yet the government only began to write to women in 2009, when thousands were already in their late fifties. And many women report receiving no notice at all*

WASPI site, hope that helps.

It was well publicised years before that. Everyone I know was well aware.

But then Osborne/actually CLEGG rushed it through sooner!
Austerity and all that.

Thanks Cleggy. You managed to stuff the students re loans and annoy the OAPs of the future. Some feat!

I worked for the NHS at a large hospital and we were well informed. I do recognize though that some women might not have been told about the changes, especially those working for smaller companies, and also those not listening to the news.

Sarnia

I hope the WASPI women get their compensation which was backed by Labour before they were elected but it is probably a forlorn hope.
A forgotten group who have lost out and are not even being considered for a pay-out are those born before April 1950. The old State Pension which these people get is over £50 a week less than the new State Pension for women born after April 1950. How is that fair?

I think the cut off date was end April 1953 from memory. I think it’s perfectly fair that those born before that date get less pension because they were getting it from age 60 whereas many of us who only missed out by months or even weeks had to wait until we were 65.

At the time I had friends just a couple of months older than me who were thrilled that they got their pensions at 60 and said it was fair that some of us had to wait until 65 as “there has to be a cut off point.”

Indigo8

Please correct me if I am wrong. Women born before April 1950 were the last to receive the full pension at 60. Women born after that date had to wait until they were 65.

Not quite, I was born 1953, it was implemented on a sort of sliding scale - I had to wait until I was almost 64 for my state pension. I was however fully aware of the changes coming.....I did as easybee comments, read newspapers, listen to Radio 4 etc. so was fully aware. I am in fact still working at 72 to supplement my pension.

I too worked in the NHS we all received letters telling it had changed to 66 years. Sure I remember it went originally in stages over time, 60 - 62 - 66 years, as our NHS pensions were supposed to match in timing.

Like a lot of NHS staff we carried on working, until we received our State Pensions, but took our NHS pensions.

The cutoff date of 6th April 1953 meant that women born after that date received the new pension. Those born before that date received the old pension but still didn’t get it at age 60. The age at which it was paid increased gradually to bring it in line with men. Can we please stop saying there was a sudden jump from 60 to 65. The attached table shows there was no such thing. We have all lost out, I didn’t get my pension at 60 but I’m stuck on the old rate for the rest of my life.

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

eazybee

I fail to see why a group of women who apparently never opened a newspaper, listened to the news, heard discussions at work or failed to attend pension information meetings think they are entitled to compensation because they were not able to retire five years earlier than everyone else, and nobody told them personally.
Very poor.

Well said, couldn't have put it better myself. It's simply women jumping on a bandwagon thinking they can get money for nothing. Money that will have to be paid for by our children and grandchildren for years in income tax. Buzz off WASPI.

I agree eazybee and not because we are loaded. I have another 2.5 years to wait and will be 67 before I get mine.

Wasn’t it in Labour’s (very light) manifesto?
Garnering votes perhaps? Several MPs posing with WASPI groups and promising compensation.

FriedGreenTomatoes2

Wasn’t it in Labour’s (very light) manifesto?
Garnering votes perhaps? Several MPs posing with WASPI groups and promising compensation.

No, it was not in the Labour Manifesto.

It was well publicised years before that.

No it wasn’t. It was a hotpotch of leaflet and short-lived media campaigns like the pejorative Working Dogs.

If you read the full PHSO reports and the many surveys done to gauge women's awareness of the change, you would be aware that many women did not know.

Even if women had a notion that things were changing they were not told what their individual new pension date was. Saying people you know were aware does not make it true for three million women.

A 2004 report clearly states:

webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20130107093842/http:/research.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd5/rports2003-2004/rrep221.pdf

Knowledge of own SPA

Only 43 per cent of all women who will be affected by the increase in SPA could identify their SPA as being 65 years or between 60 and 65.

Despite only 43% of women affected by the increase in SPA being able to identify their SPA as 65 years or between 60 and 65 years, there were factors which lowered this awareness percentage even further. In the responses given, there were significant differences by both employment status and occupation type. Of the working women who will be affected by the increase, 46 per cent were able to correctly identify their SPA as being 65 years or between 60 and 65 years. In contrast, only 36 per cent of economically inactive women who will be affected were able to correctly identify their SPA. Women affected by the increase in routine and manual occupations were much less certain about their own SPA than those in other occupations. Only 38 per cent correctly identified their SPA as being 65 years or between 60 and 65 years in contrast to nearly half, 48 per cent, of women in other types of occupation.

Whichever way you look at this, nine years after the Pensions Act 1995 and only six years before 2010 when the first women affected would see ther SP age deferred, half of the women affected did not know what their new pension age was.

There was misinformation from the Pensions Service too. I have a personal letter from the Pensions Service dated 2007, twelve years after the 1995 Pension Act, less than three years before 2010, telling me my pension age is 60. It was 65 and ended up as 66.

The first PHSO report states that there were never any plans to tell women born after May 1955, as I was. I only got that PS letter as I had been widowed. It was the only communication I ever received before reaching 65 years and 8 months and being invited to claim my State Pension at 66.

By 2004, the DWP knew that its publicity wasn’t working, that it needed to tell women individually. By 2007, three years later, it had still done nothing about it. It then admitted that it did not have complete enough customer information systems (CIS) that would enable them to tell everyone affected.

Neverthless, the government was reluctant to spend money to update these systems so it could do the necessary work to inform every woman affected by the change. All this is documented in the PHSO report.

StripeyGran in quite right when she says letters weren’t sent until 2009, less than a year before the first women were affected.

The EU Directive to equalise pension age was issued in 1978, a directive that the UK, as a member state, agreed to. Thatcher’s government did nothing about it. It took another 17 years for Major to legislate for change in 1995. Fourteen years later, the then Labour administation of the day was still botching the implementation.

It was a shocking fifteen year catalogue of maladministration, between 1995 and 2010, thirty two years if you count from 1978 to 2010 and the Thatcher governments' inertia.

This has especially disdvantaged women who did unskilled poorly-paid work and had no private pension to fall back on. Around 300,000 WASPI women have died without compensation.

I started work in 1971 age 16 understanding that I would receive my SP at 60. I was never told that my SP age was anything other than 60. I ended up paying an additional six years of NIC until age 66 for which I receive no additional pension as I paid 50 years altogether and only 35 count.

I fall within the new single-tier scheme (born after 5 April 1953) but my pension is calculated under the old SP rules as it’s more advantageous.

Had I received my pension at 60, I would have received around £40,000 of pension between age 60 and 66 which, as a widow, would have been very helpful. I will break even on the loss around age 83, if I live that long.

I do not want or expect a vast amout of compensation but I would appreciate some small token of recompense for decades of maladministration.

I was born at the end of April 1953. I got my pension when I was 63. A friend who was born in July 1953 had to wait another year after me. I got my work pension as soon as I finished work at 61.

It was well known by anyone who read a newspaper. I don't know why people thought they should get their pension five years before men who were likely to die younger, that was the real unfairness.

Thank you PaynesGrey.