WASPI Campaign .... State Pensions

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  • xylophone
    xylophone Posts: 44,011
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    See my post 386 above - what is the answer to the questions?
  • GunJack
    GunJack Posts: 11,668
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    Under the flat rate pension rules it clearly states that you will not be entitled to the flat rate pension if you were contracted out.

    no it doesn't, you can still hit the max single tier (NOT flat-rate) if you have enough contributions. I'd get a state pension statement, as most of yours will be under the old system anyway, and every year from 16-17 on will get you an extra 1/35th of the newSP... plus, if you were only contracted out for 5 yrs you should have SERPS/S2P on top of the basic up to Apr 16, so probably not as bad as you think...
    ......Gettin' There, Wherever There is......

    I have a dodgy "i" key, so ignore spelling errors due to "i" issues, ...I blame Apple :D
  • I have just checked again the information shown on the New State pension website and it definitely says that contracted out will affect your entitlement. No mention of any mitigation there. My point is that one cannot know merely through "media". All persons whose pension was affected should have had proper targeted advice in order to allow decisions to be made which affect their income in such a radical way. not everyone has the means to employ financial advisors or whatever to help them unravel all this. It should be communicated in a clear and personal manner. Now, with all the hooha (and yes that is partly because of WASPI) more people are aware and are checking but it should have happened BEFORE all the changes not afterwards due to publicity from pressure groups.
  • p00hsticks
    p00hsticks Posts: 12,645
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    Under the flat rate pension rules it clearly states that you will not be entitled to the flat rate pension if you were contracted out.

    a) it's not a "flat rate" pension - it's a "single tier" pension, because from 2016 the distinction between contracted in and out was removed and everyone pays the same rate of NI

    b) no idea what rules you are reading but it's completely incorrect that being contracted out at any point somehow disqualifies you from getting the new State Pension. As at April 6th 2016, your entitlement under both old and new rules will be calculated by DWP, and the higher of the two amounts will form your starting amount. As part of the new rules calculation a deduction will be made for years contracted out, because you will have paid less NI in these years than someone contracted in. But if you have less that five years contracted out this is unlikely to be a large amount. If your starting amount is less than the nSP maximum of £155.65 and you still have some years before you reach state pension age, your starting amount can be increased by around £4.45 for each additional NI year you get going forward until you reach that £155.65 limit.

    I really recommend you get a personal pension statement to see what your personal starting amount is
  • jamesd
    jamesd Posts: 26,103
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    edited 19 July 2016 at 10:48PM
    What is your personal interest in this subject jamesd? You seem oddly well acquainted with the minutiae of Hansard and are able to churn out figures at will. Are you an MP?
    I'm not an MP or any other form of elected representative.

    Just look at my other posts and you'll find that I often do the background work to understand issues, more than most people do, because I often like to really understand the issues. So I did things like reading the reports of Lord Turner's Pension Commission back under the last Labour government, to get a better idea of the challenges and possible solutions for the UK pension system. Which in turn meant that I already knew about the life expectancy and dependency ratio issues when these changes to state pension age came up. The Turner Commission reports - all of them - are still a superb introduction to the issues with pensions in the UK.

    My personal interest is in opposing discrimination - both gender and across generations - and having a sustainable state pension system, in part because as a person of the baby boomer generation I'll be in the state pension system at the time of forecasted peak financial stress on it, if I have normal life expectancy. And of course helping people to understand pensions and pension-related issues like this one and being a tax and NI payer.
    Have you any right to to claim that it's because women 'don't want to carry on working'? Based on what exactly?
    Of course I have, since I've read a great deal of comment from those women and their representatives including many of their formal responses to consultations. Having read those things and the WASPI ask it's clear that for the majority it's just wanting to retire at 60, or at least get a state pension then. There's that research thing again - I've done it so I know what many of those things say.

    Of course that's the majority and some do have difficulty continuing to work. But those seem to have no more difficulty than a man doing the same work at the same age so that's not a reason for a woman to be able to have their state pension sooner than the corresponding man.
    I am a 1950's woman, still working and paying NI but that is because, at the moment, I am able to. Were I to have a physically demanding, zero hours contract and were to have an illness which might limit my ability to do that job, would that be an unrealistic ask that I do not have to wait another 18 months for my (earned) state pension when I have had insufficient notice of (in my case) just 6 years of the second increase in SPA?
    I assume that you would not want to assert that you are any less capable of working than a man of the same age. Assuming that is so then all you'd be asking for is discrimination that benefits you based on your gender. And yes, that's something that I think is and should be unrealistic. I don't agree that six years is insufficient notice for the sort of changes involved, though I do agree that it would be a good thing to have more notice. But not as a mandatory requirement.
  • mgdavid
    mgdavid Posts: 6,705
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    Yes I would have paid 40 years by 2011. I would have retired in 2013 (age 60) with 42 years of contributions. I will now work till 2018. That's five extra years?

    It's not 5 extra years, it's just the same as men. The earlier expectations were 5 years too soon, were sexist and unfair and discriminatory against men.
    'It's equality, luv' as another poster said earlier.
    The questions that get the best answers are the questions that give most detail....
  • xylophone
    xylophone Posts: 44,011
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    OP, have you obtained a new state pension statement?

    This will give you your starting amount.

    Can you also state your date of birth?

    If you have not obtained a new state pension statement, see link in my previous and obtain one.

    This will clarify your position.


    See https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/512799/your-state-pension-statement-explained-dwp042.pdf
  • jamesd
    jamesd Posts: 26,103
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    Agree - the increase in state pension age should definitely have started much earlier.
    There we're also in agreement, I think.
    What I cannot agree on though is that there is a smaller cohort of future generations, certainly in the shorter term. The 1960's saw a huge rise in the birth rate and it will be my children who will be paying their pensions.
    Please take a look at the graph showing anticipated dependency ratio changes. and observe the projected changes:

    2012: 3.21
    2017: 3.29 (a short term improvement)
    2022: 3.39
    2027: 3.08
    2032: 2.76
    2037: 2.74

    Dependency ratio is the number of working people per non-working state pensioner. A projected 31% increase instate pension recipients would inevitably stress this even if the number of working people was unchanged. Though in fact the UK population is expected to increase (well, before brexit immigration changes...) but still not be able to keep up with the increase in state pension recipients.

    Also note that the short term improvement is in a significant part due to the changes in state pension age that are being discussed here, which keep many people working for longer. Undo those changes and that'd presumably vanish into the longer term trend.

    How did I know this? Back to the Turner Commission and knowing what to search for, then a simple Google search for the text "uk dependency ratio" to get to the data.
    Oddly enough, they don't seem to resent that, despite attempts to promote inter-generational unrest.
    Younger people tend not to be much interested in pensions and most won't even know that the flat rate pension system is a large cut to the state pension for those with a fullish working life. Under the old system for a low earner it'd have been around 190 a week.
  • jamesd
    jamesd Posts: 26,103
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    That Guardian story has been discussed previously and anyone who is interested might want to read these and other comments on it, including things like the transparent lies of one contributor to it:

    Explaining the lies
    A financial loss that doesn't seem to be a loss after all
    Should we be sympathetic... only until we look in more detail

    House of Commons Library Number CBP-07405, 6 July 2016 research briefing "Increases in the State Pension age for women born in the 1950s" is probably a better background read, see the PDF at the bottom of that page.
  • jamesd
    jamesd Posts: 26,103
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    Under the flat rate pension rules it clearly states that you will not be entitled to the flat rate pension if you were contracted out.
    That's not quite what it means even though clearly it's caused you to think that.

    In the system that applied prior to 6 April 2016 a person accumulated two different parts of state pension entitlement:

    1. the basic state pension. One year of NI (above the lower earnings limit) or credits got 1/30th of the basic state pension entitlement added. Contracting out had no effect on this at all.

    2. the additional state pension. This is earnings-related and this is the part that people could contract out of, or be in a work scheme that contracted them out, as the NHS scheme did for you.

    So even if contracted out with the NHS scheme as you were, you'd still have an entitlement for a full basic state pension after 30 years under those rules.

    The flat rate/single tier pension calculation handles contracting out differently and usually in a way that produces a lower payment but this also doesn't matter. That's because as of 6 April 2016 everyone was given a foundation amount of money entitlement that was the higher of their entitlement under the old or new rules. So if entitled to the full basic state pension you'd still be entitled to at least that weekly amount.

    Starting from 6 April 2016 if a person is entitled to less than the flat rate maximum their foundation amount is increased by 1/35th of the flat rate amount per year worked until they reach that cap.

    What this means is that people like you who were contracted out and have some years to go are likely winners. You'll get both the contracted out part from the work pension and also be able to accumulate more state pension for years when a person who wasn't contracted out would already have reached the cap.

    To know your actual situation today it's best to get your state pension forecast. It's not quite current because the 2015-16 year won't be included until around November 2016, the usual delay.
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