Women's state pension age: Parliament debate - add your views?

[RowanMumsnet]

Hello all

Parliament's Petitions Committee has been in touch - having seen our webchat with Mhairi Black about women's state pension ages - to ask whether MNers would like to have some input into a Westminster Hall debate about the issue.

This debate is as a result of a petition calling for the government to 'Make fair transitional state pension arrangements for 1950s women' getting the required number of signatures for a Parliament debate.

The Committee is after MNers' thoughts on the following questions; you can see links to the first Commons debate here (video) and here (transcript).

What were the most important points in the first debate for you? What do you think should have been covered that was not?

What points do you think a second debate should focus on?

What questions would you ask the Minister following their response to the debate?

Your thoughts will be fed back to MPs taking part in the Westminster Hall debate.

Thanks
MNHQ

fuck that idea - many, many people don't live till 80 and a vast number of people could never secure personal savings and pensions to be able to retire without a state pension.

it would see working class people, people who were carers for a long period of their life or suffered ill health and disability or were sahp with partners who then died young or became disabled or buggered off and left them with nothing etc working till they died or being forced to live with the humiliation of benefits assessments etc until their dying day.

That's a really good idea 80's mum.

I don't know how people are expected to work into their late 60 s or even early 70s.

It's just ridiculous.

My DH took early redundancy at 58. With many years in computers and even having his own businesshe thought he would walk into a job. He didn't. In 6 months he had five interviews and got down to the last two or three but was never offered the job. Disillusionment set in . He felt he was there to make the numbers up. Now at nearly 63 he's not decrepit but he's having health problems. A recent small stroke for eg has affected his field Vision so he cannot drive. He has the usual aches and pains of a 63 year old. He didn't have a physical job. I feel for those, men and women that do.

Is there another cynical ploy/ agenda to kill us all off. Apart from those with dementia living until their late 80s or 90s ( my own theory is lack of stress and care home nursing keeping them ticking over) the only other long livers I know about are the royal family. ( lack of stress/ good health care?)

Pensions require long term planning. But how can people plan long term, if Governments change the rules. For most people a private pension will only ever top up a state pension, never replace it.

I also do not understand how young people are going to live to such an old age, when we also have an obesity crisis and supposedly this generation will be the first to die before their parents. It simply does not add up.

I agree with needs anecdotal evidence that people aren't living longer.

I believe we are fed so much propaganda that in the end we start to believe it. In the recent deaths of family and friends of the last 18 months out of just four people not one reached 65. The other three men were 55, 57 and just 60! They didn't even get to claim.

I'm starting to believe more and more in the conspiracy theorists/ factists that people are slaves. Work them till they drop. There's always more to replace them.

Fill them full of medications with horrible side effects...that should help them on their way a bit quicker.

Cynical old me I know but older people are not revered In our society. I cannot think of a time inmy lifetime where they were.

Slaves? Really? Working to support yourself is slavery?

There needs to be provision for people who are too old to work, simple as that. No one is entitled to a long leisurely retirement just because, unless they're funding it themselves. Although I agree the changes have been made too quickly for the current generation of retirees, who couldn't plan for what they didn't know would happen.

That is the issue. The changes were made far too quickly for older women to make additional provisions for their pensions.

And the statistics about life expectancy are always based on babies born now. It is lower for people born in the 50's.

we don't work only to support ourselves though itmustbe - we work as a collective, a society, and we pay taxes and NI to take care of our collective needs and as part of a contract which shouldn't have it's termed changed by the party with all the power. we also raise children, care for elderly relatives, volunteer, are happy to contribute to the costs of looking after the sick and elderly, pay overseas aid, take in refugees, uphold the roads and infrastructure and the arts and education, etc etc all of which contributes to that society and uphold our end of the contract. we DON'T live in a system or an ideology where we just work to support ourselves and ourselves only

if the contract becomes work till the day you die, watch every public service (and the jobs they were made up of) be slashed to nothing, have the rules changed at whim etc without any consultation whilst the rich keep raking it in and profiting from selling off and cutting everything, avoiding even paying tax and those in power take care only of their own groups interests then that contract has been torn up.

note also these changes disproportionately effect those who have the least power to influence policy and the least ability to financially prosper.

it's not as simple as oh look it's a balancing of the books sillies. there is ideology, class, power, gender, protected interests etc involved. working to support yourself is dead simple sounding and neutral if you don't factor in these elements and take myopic and frankly deliberately deceiptful meritocracy type perspectives of reality and society.

life expectancy and health are still (and i'd be willing to be now increasingly) issues of economics and class and gender btw. so essentially those working class people still dying off young relative to their rich peers would be taking 6 or 7 more years work and tax contributions on the chin in order to pay for the retirements of the richer of their generation who could afford to retire younger and with better health and longer life expectations ahead of them. hardly seems fair and yes, looks a lot like serfdom.

Whenever I used to say that something wasn't fair, my father used always to say "life isn't fair". He was right, it isn't - and never will be.

Is that a reason to just lie down & be walked on?

I'm 62, I have worked full time since I was 18 and I am furious about the rise in pension age.
I care for two very elderly parents and my pension won't start until March 9 2019.
Circumstances were such that I have no savings, private pension etc
It stinks.
If this was happening to men there would be total uproar.

yes garlic apparently it is because 80sMum's daddy told her so you see.

the weird thing is, we are told that government policies benefit older people, as we all more likely to vote - but maybe they just mean men.

they often do when they say 'people' bookbook. also the generation currently effected will be assumed to all be 'wives' who are provided for and mostly didn't work anyway by this bunch of public school boys from looking around their own families

too true! most of the politicians don't know anything about real life anyway. I would love it if they had to do a proper job for a reasonable amount of time before they could be eligible for election.

I'm another one who's been well and truly stuffed. Born in 1955 and now like lots of posters have a pension age of 66. At the moment I am working full time, but have redundancy facing me this year......

Yes I suspect you are right that they assume we all have Husbands who will take care of us.

I wrote to Cameron, in 2015, about the appalling way that 1950s womens pensions had been handled. I pointed out that, like many other posters on this thread, that I had had my state retirement date put back 3 times, each time, with only a 2 year notice? I asked him to explain how, with the gatepost continually being pushed back, and with

Gah, posted too soon. .. and with no guarantee that my current forecasted retirement age would be kept to, how could 1950s women be expected to manage and plan for their futures. I received an acknowledgement to say that the DP would be in contact to explain what plans were afoot for women in this situation. As soon as I receive that letter, I'll make sure I come back on here to tell you what nuggets of information I get. Judging from the fact that I originally wrote in August last year, I think it's fair to say that DWP hasn't got any plans because they don't give a fuck about 60 year old women.

I emailed my MP about the unfair transition for women born in the 50s and received the reply that the state pensionable age should be the same for men and women and that he himself at 53 would probably not receive his until he's 70. So spectacularly missing the point! Perhaps I was too emotional and didn't explain the salient points very well

I think honey badger put her point across very well . Thank you HB. Very well said.

Met up with some old friends today and the husband also misses out on the new pension by 8 days so it seems to be happening to men too.

All affected should be marching in the streets. Voting with our feet. As long as all of these rich , posh boys are in power it's never going to get any better.

People are going to die in harness. That just is so wrong and yes what happens to the pensions of those who die before they reach the age where they can collect their pension or maybe just get a year or two of it

We are a very rich country. Still! I don't believe the propaganda that's trotted out.

And yes, I do think it's slavery when the goal posts are moved just like that and people's circumstances are not taken into account.

It's shameful, demoralising and very undemocratic.

U fortunately, I'm not as eloquent as HB...but I know when I spot a wrong!