Should 1950s WASPI women be compensated?

colsten

MSE poll and discussion

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/76540212#Comment_76540212

Annworked42years

YES after working for 42 years contributing national insurance payments every week I do feel I was entitled to my pension at the age of 60. Being advised less than 12 months before retirement age did not give me sufficient time to replan for my retirement.
Where will they get the money? Try using the monies paid in by all the working women to this end. If a private pension company made a decision to extend the date you could draw a private pension by 6 years, after paying in for 40+ Years there would be uproar and probably court cases brought to force them to pay.

hyubh

Annworked42years wrote: »

YES after working for 42 years contributing national insurance payments every week I do feel I was entitled to my pension at the age of 60. Being advised less than 12 months before retirement age did not give me sufficient time to replan for my retirement.
Where will they get the money? Try using the monies paid in by all the working women to this end. If a private pension company made a decision to extend the date you could draw a private pension by 6 years, after paying in for 40+ Years there would be uproar and probably court cases brought to force them to pay.

See my reply to this in the other thread...

colsten

Annworked42years wrote: »

YES after working for 42 years contributing national insurance payments every week I do feel I was entitled to my pension at the age of 60.

State pension eligibility is not determined by feelings of entitlement but by rules defined in law

Annworked42years wrote: »

Being advised less than 12 months before retirement age did not give me sufficient time to replan for my retirement.

are you seriously trying to tell anyone you had to wait to be told, and couldn't make your own enquiries? I could almost believe you if I didn't know any better from my own experience (my SPA went up by over 5 years).

Annworked42years wrote: »

Where will they get the money? Try using the monies paid in by all the working women to this end.

What if less gets paid in every month than needs to be paid out every month?

Annworked42years wrote: »

If a private pension company made a decision to extend the date you could draw a private pension by 6 years, after paying in for 40+ Years there would be uproar and probably court cases brought to force them to pay.

Private pensions work entirely different to state pensions. But in any case, there was a court case about the SPA increases, which has rejected the claims in their entirely.

It's interesting that in this court case, one of the claimants said she didn't know what her SPA was. She also, "with engaging honesty" [sic], provided the court with two letters addressed to her which clearly stated her increased SPA. Memory losses of this kind don't seem to be unusual, as there have been similar revelations by others, though not all of them were made to a court.

cedardrive

I was born in 1959 and I was aware, in the early 90s that the pension ages would be changing. At that time there were several options being discussed in relation to equality. Lowering the age for men to 60, bringing the ages closer together at age 62 or age 63, Increasing the women's age to 65. I only think it is fair that men and women have an equal age to claim their state pension. I knew that I would have to wait until I was aged 65. More recently the age was increased to 66. I wasn't expecting that, but it is the same for men. I don't think there should be any compensation. We, as women want to be equal so why should we have a different state pension age. Ignorance is no excuse and when you look at any legislation, this is the case. The rules can change at any time depending on what the government legislates. All benefits can change. For info, I have contributed for 44 years, so far in the UK. Thank you for letting me put my point across.

in_my_wellies

I was aware it would change.
Before stopping work I checked that I had contributed sufficient NI years and have a letter to say I had 31 years and as 30 were needed I would be entitled to a full state pension pending any changes in the rules.
Six months after I stopped work they changed the rules to 35 years. I realise I was warned in the letter but I feel more cross about that as I had done everything I could by checking and already had 30 years but the rules changed AFTER I left.

sylvingoe

Could I just point out that the category for ages 59 to 69 includes some women who are not included in the compensation scheme, as only women born up to and including 5th April 1960 would get compensation.

Those who were born between 6th April and 26th November 1960 are aged 59 and are affected by 3 rises to their State Pension Age (those born before that had 2 rises), but are not included in the compensation scheme.

I feel that if there is to be compensation, those born on or after 6th April 1960 should be included. 1950s women talk about notice in the form of letters, but in fact, a woman born after April 1960 may have received a letter at the same age as a woman born in the 1950s, as the DWP only sent letters to some women 2 to 3 years before their 60th birthdays.

Therefore I feel 1960s women should not be disregarded, especially as they have to wait until after their 66th birthdays.

The other issue is that at the same time as governments were making all the changes to State Pension Age, we were under austerity measures, so a lot of people will have found it hard/impossible to make financial plans for a later State Pension Age and this does not just apply to 1950s women, but to all women born afterwards and men have also had their State Pension Age increased.

Triumph13

Surprise, surprise. If you put up a poll where one side are highly organised and will have been pushing round the call to vote on social media within minutes, of course you get a massively unrepresentative poll. That's even before you factor in self-identification of age group / gender and the poll letting people vote as many times as they want. A completely meaningless exercise.

Holly100

I am one of the women who was told 18 months before my 60 birthday that I had to work a further 3 years to get my pension. My husband and I had planned to retire together, he being 5 years older than me. I was lucky enough to get my very small NHS pension at 60 and decided that I had paid enough into Government coffers over the years and they were not going to scupper my retirement plans. I left my job on my 60 birthday and went out cleaning making sure that I earned the same amount each week as I would have got in my state pension. It was hard going after sitting in an office all my working life but I did it. I feel angry that we were given such short notice and that it has affected a vast amount of women - I have a cousin who is just over a year younger than me and she has only just got her pension having to wait until she was 65 so I count myself as being lucky. Also lets not forget the men in all this who have also had to wait longer for their pensions after believing all their working lives that they would get it at 65.
Compensation would be nice, however the country is in a bad way regarding NHS, Education and Policing. To sort this out and pay us women compensation the coffers would need to be overflowing which we all know they are not. The only way that Jeremy Corbyn could afford to compensate us women would be through borrowing and we all know where that left the country last time the Labour government was in power and that is why we have been in austerity over the last 8 years.

Paul_Herring

Triumph13 wrote: »

Surprise, surprise. If you put up a poll where one side are highly organised and will have been pushing round the call to vote on social media within minutes, of course you get a massively unrepresentative poll.

They're pejoratively called voodoo polls for a number of reasons, of which this is one.

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I can't vote in it using Firefox, because whoever constructed the poll didn't include the 3rd party javascript files properly and FF is refusing to render the vote button. (The same is true of the Facebook comments on news items incidentally.)

Paul_Herring

Holly100 wrote: »

I am one of the women who was told 18 months before my 60 birthday that I had to work a further 3 years to get my pension

Yet other people of your age knew years and years before you did...

Thank you for your first post on here.