Pensions ( Waspies)

[Moier]

Quote: 'Did you know when I was 16, the government made an agreement with me, that if I paid National Insurance every week, they would give me a pension when I was 60
I kept my end of the deal and am still paying in!!
On the 5th and 6th of June, the UK Government may be made to give back the right to retire at 60 to all those women who worked and paid their National Insurance.
Currently their pension payout is delayed until 66 or 67 depending on date of birth.
We all know that the pension age for women born in the sixties has been raised. Did you know a campaign called ‘Back to 60 Movement’ has won the right to a Judicial Review and is taking the DWP to the High Court? On the 5th and 6th June they will attempt to get women justice over non consultation in raising the pensionable age to 66 and above.
Michael Mansfield QC will lead the case and the argument for the movement. However, there does not appear to be any media coverage regarding this significant event. That is why we’re raising the awareness now. Let's hope for justice rightly deserved.
There appears to be a media blackout on this issue, which suggests that the government have put a block on the media reporting it. So let’s use social media for what it’s good at - share the hell out of this.

Yes - the WASPI case has had a lot of media attention but only in the past 10 years. The government's own investigation found research reported in 2004 showed information about state pension age changes was not reaching the people who needed it most. Their researchers recommended information should be ‘appropriately targeted’. The PHSO report states that the DWP failed to take this feedback into account properly when deciding in August 2005 what to do next. It had identified it should do more but did not.
Reportedly, a survey in 2006 showed too many women still thought their state pension age was 60. Surely we can all agree with @retirementislooming "You should not be able to change pensions (state or private) once someone has already been paying in, based on the terms that were understood at the start."
Nice for the women who say they were fully aware of the leap in pension age but the Ombudsman DID have their legal team on this case for 6 years & they have stated: "DWP failed to take adequate account of the need for targeted and individually tailored information or of how likely it was doing the same thing would achieve different results. Despite having identified there was more it could do, it failed to provide the public with as full information as possible. DWP failed to make a reasonable decision about next steps in August 2005 and failed to use feedback to improve service design and delivery. It therefore failed at this point to ‘get it right’ and ‘seek continuous improvement’. That was maladministration." And no government should 'cherry pick' what it decides to spend money on - it should follow the law. Billions of pounds are flung at vanity projects. Look at the huge amounts that could be raised by a fit for purpose Wealth Tax.

The back to 60 campaign is one of the most stupid and out of touch things anyone can admit to supporting.

The Back to 60 Judicial review took place on the 5th/6th June 2019 and unfortunately was unsuccessful.

Yes @sophiewoo but the current court appeal is not 'Back to 60' - it's WASPI and it's to do with the legal findings by the Ombudsman of "MALADMINISTRATION" by the DWP. It begs the question WHY have an advisory governmental ombudsman if you intend to ignore its findings.

Yes, you're absolutely correct. It was held on the 5th and 6th June 2019.
Obviously Moier didn't research this issue before posting.

There might be a case to answer if it was possible to opt out of NI altogether and use the money for private pension, private health insurance and private unemployment insurance : doing so would reasonably require the person opting out to sign a legally binding document rescinding all their rights to any kind of pension income support, nhs care, state funded social care, housing and all kinds of benefits in perpetuity until death. However,enforcing such an agreement would necessarily require the state to allow the person opting out to die of starvation homeless in the gutter if their private arrangements didn't work out, so I'm quite glad they don't do this. Given that it's not optional, it is a tax not a consideration in respect of a contract, and the government has every right to vary the terms of what they offer as with all other state services.

When pensions were introduced, they should have specified right from the start that the pension age would be set at X% of life expectancy and would be subject to review every 5 years. The waspi problem was because they left the change far too long. It should have started 20 years ago

The 5 year earlier retirement age for women was because women age 60+ are expected socially to be the backbone of a myriad of voluntary services and additional carer support within the family. I do wonder how that will shift over the decades.

"Surely we can all agree with ** "You should not be able to change pensions (state or private) once someone has already been paying in, based on the terms that were understood at the start."

No we definitely can't agree with that, it is utter nonsense. The state pension is not a savings scheme like a private pension. It is a benefit to which you build entitlement through qualifying years and/ or national insurance credits. Like any other benefit, the government is entitled to change the rules a point in which the ombudsman agreed.

@Brahumbug No, the government is not "entitled" to behave unlawfully and we have had many rogue governments in the past. They sometimes get away with doing so and we had a lot of that in the past 14 years from the previous government.
Pasted below are the Ombudsman's words and the very reason it by-passed and went straight to Parliament:
📧"The Government’s apology to the women affected by its failure to communicate about State Pension age changes is very significant and it is sad that women had to wait so long to hear it – sadder still that for many it came too late. I welcome the Government’s recognition that mistakes were made, and the commitment from the Secretary of State to make sure this never happens again. We look forward to hearing more about the action plan to take this work forward and we are ready to work with the Government to support change.
However, the Government’s decision not to accept our recommendations in full is disappointing and will have been hard for the women to hear.
Our role as a Parliamentary body is to support Parliament to hold the Government to account. Throughout this investigation, DWP indicated it would not comply with our recommendations and that is why, nine months ago, we asked Parliament to intervene."
" "The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) has taken the “rare but necessary” decision to ask Parliament to intervene over complaints around how state pension changes were communicated."

It would be interesting to know the age range / financial demographic of those who oppose and those who support waspi women.

You are very good at twisting words and quoting selectively. Where did I say the government can act unlawfully? The changes to the pension Age were perfectly lawful, as the ombudsman stated in their report. Their conclusion was that there was maladministration in communication between 2005 and 2007.

The entire thread topic is about Back to 60.

I won’t be able to retire until at a minimum 68 and that age probably will rise before then so I really don’t have that much sympathy 🤷🏻‍♀️

1. Whilst the entire thread IS about 'Back to 60' (historic) the CURRENT court proceedings have been brought by WASPI.
2. "Sympathy" isn't required. The current court case is about how to address the "MALADMINISTRATION" by the DWP, that was uncovered by the PHSO (Parliamentary Ombudsman) during their 6 year investigation.
3. Many younger people will undoubtedly feel hard done by as the pension age increases and if/when they can prove DWP maladministration in their own cases, they can have their own day in court too.

The PHSO report has so many holes in it in relation to communication, all of which can be verified by the many FOI requests submitted by the WASPI co-founders in 2015. They prove that communication was inadequate (and in many cases non-existent). For example letters were sent out to only one cohort of women (which in itself is discriminatory) 14 years after the 1995 Pensions Act.
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/number_of_women_affected_by_the/response/715260/attach/2/FoI%203902%20reply.pdf

I was born in Feb 1960 so just at the tail end of those affected and don’t agree we should get compensation. We knew in 1995 about the equalisation of SPRD and although it has been extended most women got 20-30 years to address it either by topping up a private pension or overpaying a company pension if they wanted to retire earlier than state pension age. Starting in the 90s optimised any investments. Both DH and I did that from the late 90s and retired at 58 on company/private pensions. DH got his state pension last year at 66 and I get mine next Feb. Unfortunately we have to pay tax on it which is a bigger bug bear to me than the age it pays out.

Some people due to circumstances were not able to save but more simply took no interest in pensions and only realised the change much later.

So you're OK - that's great. Some people survived, some didn't, and some lost their homes. The Ombudsman's legal team took SIX YEARS to go through all the paperwork and their report states: "Our report highlights failings in the way the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) communicated changes to women’s State Pension age. You can read the full report here or download a PDF (1MB)." "We consider that, if DWP had made a reasonable decision in August 2005 and then acted promptly, it would have written to affected women to tell them about changes to their State Pension age by, at the latest, December 2006. This is 28 months earlier than DWP actually wrote to them. It follows that these women should have had at least 28 months’ more individual notice of the changes than they got. The opportunity that additional notice would have given them to adjust their retirement plans was lost."

It's not my personal opinion - it's a legal team scrutinising paperwork over a six year period. Everyone can have a view but the view of the legal team is the accurate one imao.

The prominent “waspi” women inthe back to 60 campaign are almost all wealthy boomers. They come across very badly imo.

that said I don’t agree with the cause anyway- financially the state pension is unsustainable

The information was publicly available though. If you plan to retire you need to check what pension you will get.

With all due respect, the only information available was mediocre to say the least eg a small paragraph "hidden" within a page in the Financial Times.
Other FOI requests and evidence the WASPI co-founders submitted and presented to the Work and Pensions Select Committee in December 2015 substantiate this.

I don't know very much about the 'Back to 60' campaign but agree it sounds unrealistic. I was born in the 50's and therefore support WASPI as all who believe in fair play should in alignment with the Ombudsman's legal findings. I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) the reason women had previously retired at 60 was based on most of them missing 5 years of paying in NI due to time out spent raising a child to school age - those women would have been disadvantaged if their retirement age had been the same as the men's. How many of us read the Financial Times? Not many! I recently met up with ten class mates I hadn't seen in 50 years - all of us 50's women. One had never heard of WASPI (or Back to 60) but was quite well off, and one had lost her home. There are some 50's women who don't need compensation so perhaps there could be an opt-out scheme but they could also take the compensation and give it to a women's charity or the NSPCC and make a real difference.

It appears that the PHSO ignored the facts as to when women were notified. "Facts don't cease to exist because they are ignored".
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/number_of_women_affected_by_the/response/715260/attach/2/FoI%203902%20reply.pdf

This is one of the many FOI requests submitted by the WASPI co-founders in 2015 that prove beyond a shadow of a doubt communication was inadequate and non existent in many cases.

No. Why?

People born after 1994 have been hit with so much crap its unbelievable. Have to pay for uni at the higher rate, housing costs gone crazy, joining the workforce after 2008 so no jobs, and wage stagnation since then, defined benefit/final salary pensions gone, 0 hour contracts, most fairly assume there will be no state pension by the time they get there after paying everyone elses...

People born before the 90s were so lucky. Please do not search for yet another way to screw over young people in this country. They're all going to leave.

There have been similar challenges over many decades and we can also sympathise with young people re university fees, housing etc but it doesn't diminish the WASPI case and the DWP failures in communication, and it's perfectly possible to campaign for both causes (or more) at the same time. One of the women affected by the Post Office scandal is also a WASPI and she has been vociferous for both scandals. When a government makes a gross error it is usually forced to rectify it.

That’s not true at all. It was all over the media for many years. The ombudsman report does not back up your claim

I don’t think there is any gross error here though. People need to check what they are entitled to before they retire