Mixed feelings about WASPI victory

[Fauxflowersnoflowers]

Early 40s here, so this doesn't as such directly affect me, but I've been intrigued by the story about the WASPI campaign and done a bit of reading around it and I'm still confused.

The changes apparently were in the public sphere since as early as 1995 and could have been known about. Many women were aware and did take financial steps to address the changes. The current case seems to centre around whether they should have been personally informed, not was the change fair.

WASPI just said on Women's Hour that they don't object to the equalisation of the pension age, but then callers were objecting to having to work longer and not getting a good retirement, so the two arguments seem to contradiction each other

Also, it seems misunderstood that a compensation payment would be a full reinbursement of the "lost" pension, from my reading it's more likely to be a fixed amount to recognise the fact they should have received a letter. Although again, it appears many did, just not everyone, so who gets the compensation? All of them or just some?

I suppose the other question is how do we pay this? Public services are already stretched badly, childcare costs are crippling and there is a bit of a worry for me that the funds to pay this are going to come out of other areas that will just make the loves of younger women harder and push their pension ages even further back, maybe into their 70s.

Feel really conflicted about it. On one hand kudos to the women for getting this far, but in the other it feels like a really clear example of the importance of properly understanding your own finances and educating yourself about your pension planning.

I will feel quite annoyed if they get a lot of compensation, given many younger people may not even get a pension until they are 70 and this could mean they retire even later. The women complaining should have received a letter but even if they hadn't you would have to be living in a cave not to know the pension age was going to be raised.

I'm in my late 50s and so retirement age was still 60 for a lot of my working life but I knew it would increase at some point before I got to retirement as it was clearly unfair. They speeded it up in 2010 from the 1995 timetable but it wasn't a sudden jump from 60 to 66. It increased incrementally from 2010 to 2018 so at worst people would have only retired a year or so later than expected, not six years later. We used to talk about retirement at work sometimes and the people who were a few years older knew the pension age was changing and they would have to wait until 61 or 62 instead of 60 etc,.

when my children were young, late 80’s I had a series of crappy part time jobs to fit around childcare. I spoke to a financial advisor about starting a small private pension and was informed it was ILLEGAL for me, as a married woman, to do so.
I started work at 16 and paid ‘full stamp’ in the days when a half stamp was an option. Many people don’t start paying NI until they are 21 nowadays.
I’m 63 and have another 4 years before I get my pension. I have 2 chronic health conditions and have been told I won’t live beyond 70. I’m determined to live longer and appear fit and healthy so hopefully I’m right.
I think it’s unfair the goal
posts were moved and I’m not sure that I’ll even get any compensation IF it even gets paid out.

Moving the goalposts at short notice was the issue.

I ended up working six more years than I'd planned for, but had six more years of workplace pension input, so OK.
It didn't work out as badly for me as for some women who relied solely on state pensions and who, as it has been said above, went without to buy more years, had to sell houses, had a great deal of worry and distress, etc.
Those are the women who should be fully compensated. The ones who are still alive, that is.

As others have said it's not so much the equalising of pension ages that was the issue, it was the coalition government's 2011 speeding up of the process that hit hard and gave the women affected little time to prepare. Also the government claimed that it had contacted women but then couldn't find any record of actually sending out letters to inform them. DWP record keeping does seem to have been poor and they didn't investigate complaints properly either.

The government obviously hoped that it would all go away. Former pensions minister, Baroness Ros Altmann told the Beeb this morning that many women weren't told clearly enough when their state pension would be. Worse, she claims that she was told to shut up about the issue and that the women who were complaining would just go away.
They didn't.

Being on the receiving end of that much maladministration by a government department for years is justification for some compensation IMO. And yes, it's taxpayer money but the ombudsman has pointed out the government can't say that "times are tight" as an excuse for not providing a fair remedy when it was their screw up in the first place.

I imagine that if a blanket compensation payment is agreed, it will only be a token £100 or so.

She doesn't sound financially astute to me if she didn't find out until she was 60 that she would have to wait until 66. That would have been 2014 if she is now nearly 70, and the change was announced in 2010.

I'm extremely surprised too at people who just trust what they know/believe is the status quo and don't spend any time checking or planning themselves, in case it changes. Governments change budgets and policies all the time; they don't just set out a definitive stall and then promise to leave it like that forever.

Even if you never watch/read/absorb the news, if you've made plans would you not just get in touch with the DWP or speak to a financial advisor in the years before you're expecting the money for your personal projection and to check that your qualifying age hasn't changed, or you aren't missing any qualifying years?

Even if they had sent out a watertight letter to everybody affected, things still regularly get lost in the post; so if that's all that people are relying on, they still wouldn't have been any the wiser. I'm amazed that people would be so passive about knowing what their financial provision will be for potentially the last 30+ years of their lives.

I'm not far off 50 and I don't recall ever receiving a letter from the government about my state pension. All I know is that they've been talking about increasing it for well over 20 years, and now they have increased it significantly. I have no trust that the current state pension age will remain static and not increase further, so I will be monitoring it carefully on a regular basis before making any plans and burning any bridges based on assumptions or 'how it used to be'.

As it happens, my health means that I am very unlikely to live anywhere near to that age, so for me, it's probably moot; but I will still be making plans and keeping myself informed for as long as it is relevant to me.

I’m in this age group and I don’t see how women ‘didn’t know’ as there were letters from the DWP. I can’t really get worked up about it for myself as I’ve got a personal pension and other things. In fact I’m still doing some consultancy. It would be a different story if I’d been working in a supermarket or something else quite physical and relying on State Pension. The warnings were issued though.

What preparation did they need to do? They just needed to carry on working.

Most women weren't told so had no time to plan their finances. It wasn't always possible for people to continue in their jobs. Imagine having arthritis, say, and desperate to retire in two years time to find you've got another 6 years and you can't carry on as your job is physical. That was one story in the news today.

I'm 54. I had been already working and paying in for 32 years when they changed the age (in 2018). So instead of getting my pension in 6 years, I have to wait 11 years. That's a loss over £60k, and I won't get any compensation. That's not what I signed up for. I'm too young to be a WASPI. How is that remotely fair?

Your retirement age would have been increased from 60 to 65 in 1995, when - if my maths is correct - you’d have only been 25 so plenty of time to plan.

I do have sympathy for the people whose retirement ages were increased following the 2011 decisions, as that really didn’t give enough planning time, but at some point people need to take responsibility for looking into their own positions. Surely no one has trusted any government for at least 50 years?

I’m a 1950s born woman. WASPI have been campaigning for years to get compensation for women like me.

It doesn’t matter one bit, that some women are struggling to understand the situation. Having said that, it’s sad that you don’t know what you’re talking about when it comes to discrimination against women.

The Ombudsman clearly gets it.

1. The ombudsman urges Parliament to intervene to "make sure a compensation scheme is established"

I think your financial advisor was lying when he said it would be illegal for you to have a private pension in the late 80s because you were a married woman.

Really mixed views, but seems a bit of a generational divide.

I'd like us as a society to talk more about the Gender Pension Gap, not just the Gender Pay Gap. We really need people to be more educated about that.

Unfortunately like @fitzwilliamdarcy I don't think we'll have a state pension in the next 30 years. The age demographics of the country will just make it completely unaffordable.

The worrying thing is the current cost of childcare, housing costs etc are forcing soooo many women into very reduced hours working or giving up making pension contributions, which is only going to exacerbate the Gender Pension Gap. If they are left without any state pension support at all in years to come, they are screwed.

I think we have much more concerning problems stemming from societal structural issues at the younger end of the pension spectrum we should targeting. Which is one of the reasons my sympathies on providing WASPI compensation are conflicted.

Yes, I'm inclined to agree. The internet was fully 'a thing' and in common usage by then, so it would literally be a few clicks to check. Most people spend a lot longer than that each year comparing prices when renewing insurance policies that will only affect them for 12 months.

Anybody who was not internet savvy could very easily have asked an adult child or grandchild to take two minutes to check for them. We're currently helping an older relative sort out a number of financial and other affairs. She isn't online herself, but she still knows to ask us to look online for her, or even just to find a phone number so that she can call the relevant place herself. She doesn't just live in blissful ignorance and assume that the government will send her a letter about any and everything.

Well this thread shows how few people actually have any comprehension of what happened to the WASPI women, and of the issues in the case.

Sadly this poor understanding will probably also be reflected in the media and the social commentary and justify the government further in refusing to acknowledge what they did and refusing to pay any form of restitution.

Someone asked above if women born in 1959 are in the affected group - yes they are, but they had more time than most to do something about it.

Arthritis and ill health didn't exclusively effect women in the WASPI group! Why is it so bad that they had to continue to work compared with everyone else who is not in good health.

It's absolutely ridiculous. The pension age changed. It's even worse now. I don't think they should get any compensation.

I agree it sounds unlikely. I started work in 1992 so only a few years later and one thing that was impressed on me on day 1 was to pay into the pension straight away. The women's retirement age was still 60 at that time too. Should I be able to argue that I'm 'disadvantaged' that it's now at least 67?

Remember that the WASPI women are of the generation that were able to buy family sized houses on a single average salary, that they didn't need to work and juggle work and family life. That looks like quite a comfortable position from the view of younger people who will likely need to work full time as well as raise their children and then work until they're nearly 70. And many still won't be able to afford to buy a house so will be forced to rent.

Yes, this is what I don't get. The disappointment and maybe struggles of not being able to retire as early as you'd hoped are obvious - but the one positive side of staying in your job is that you will still be receiving a higher income than you would on any pension.

Do/did people really just tell their employer that they were retiring on their 60th birthday and assume they would be getting their state pension then, without making the most basic checks to make sure before giving up their job?

If you were younger and giving up your job in order to move to another one, you would surely ask for the job offer, terms and dates in writing before handing in your notice?

Exactly. A lot of them would have worked part-time and still able to afford a good sized house as a couple with no need for large deposits, Also childcare was a lot cheaper. Sorry. Absolutely no sympathy whatsoever.

Loads of people don't understand their pensions though. So while there probably were letters, plenty of people will have ignored them or not understood the ramifications.

It wasn't always possible for people to continue in their jobs. Imagine having arthritis, say, and desperate to retire in two years time to find you've got another 6 years and you can't carry on as your job is physical

but this also applies to younger people - both men and women - who do physical jobs and can’t claim a pension until they are 66 or 67. Why are WASPI women a special case where ill health is concerned? What would they have done differently if they had received notification of the change in age?

Yes, we talked about it a lot at work when it was announced. It was a big deal for the women effected. However, they didn't complain about it when younger colleagues were present as they knew they were in a even worse position. That's why I find it bizarre that these women want compensation as clearly it will have to be paid for by younger working taxpayers who will have an even later retirement age.