Waspi women should be compensated for state pension age change failures

[IwantToRetire]

I heard a discussion about this on the BBC which was more detailed than this article, and implied that the problem wasn't so much how it was announced in the 1990s, but the later changes during the time Coalition was in power.

But suspect whoever is in Government there will be a delay in any payout.

https://www.professionalpensions.com/news/4188325/waspi-women-compensated-pension-age-change-failures

Somebody did try to suggest it wasn't fair on younger people to expect them to foot the bill (as if it hasn't always been the current tax payers who foot the bill at the time).

Which would be the same as saying the local government's who have gone bankrupt once it was shown they had discriminated against women employees and owed them money, shouldn't have to do it.

So not only are women too often cheated at the time, but are later told they shouldn't expect compensation because not fair on current tax payers.

(For some reason cant access the WASPI web site, but suspect it might just be overloaded. But when back on line may be worth checking their take on the situation. http://www.waspi.co.uk )

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13222947/Compensation-WASPI-women-watchdog-changes-state-pension-age-government.html?ito=rss-connatix&traffic_source=Connatix

Good and hopefully this will stop the government taking future women for fools.
men have always thought that women should suck up poor treatment and smaller pay and conditions

The problem was the incompetent and cack-handed way the rules were drawn up to deal with the increase from 65 to 66 to 67.

As was said on the other thread about this, if it is (maybe grudgingly) accepted by many of the WASPI women that the increase from 60 to 65 was communicated and known about; BUT the major complaint concerns not being given enough notice about the subsequent increase from 65 to 67 - surely any compensation should also be paid to all of the men whose retirement age rose from 65 to 67 at the same time?

Simple information included that retirement age was still 60 for years after it should have been changed on the website. If you had looked even that far you would have been reassured, erroneously.

I'm not disputing at all that successive governments have taken advantage of women in many ways; but the ability to claim the state pension five years earlier than men, whilst also having a longer life expectancy than them - whatever the original reasons given for this were - is a bit of a strange example to focus on of poor treatment and smaller pay and conditions.

Well, that was clearly shockingly errant, then. Was that in the 'early days' of the internet, before it became a commonplace fixture in most people's lives?

But I'm still surprised that anybody would have accepted without question that it must be correct and disregarded all of the other contrary publicity and information in the news and in the public sphere.

You're surprised that women looked at a government website and believed the information on it!!
All the HR departments must have also been using the same information .
its not the fault of the WASPI women that they believed what little information there was available

It's not crabs in a bucket and a trace to the bottom

I knew about the first change well in advance and factored it into my plans but only picked up the second because I heard about it on R4 Moneybox. Luckily I was in a position to carry on working part time to cover the shortfall (and in fact am still working), but others had their retirement plans seriously impacted. I think some compensation for that is due. (If I benefit it will go to family or charity.)

I think if you read the report and not the over the top media coverage it is quite clear that the first change in the 1990s was handled okay.

The problem is about how they brought in the second round stage of raising the age limit.

It isn't the women who are saying it wasn't clear, it is the investigation who are saying it wasn't clear and badly handled.

The compensation isn't about making up for those who might have paid a higher level of pension contribution, or even those who didn't think they would have to look for work for another 2 - 3 years.

It is for the "inconvenience" caused.

ie a token gesture.

When and for how long was the wrong information on government websites? These days, changes are updated within a few days at most.

Was it categorically wrong or possibly open to interpretation by those who saw the 'headline' but didn't bother to read the details to see whether they did or didn't personally qualify? There are still certain tax benefits that are open to some married couples - and these are of course detailed online - but these are age-based legacy benefits from a long time ago, for which few but the very oldest people will now ever qualify.

Was it more recently, or was it before the internet became mainstream? They obviously most definitely shouldn't have had outdated/errant information on a government website, assuming that this is the case; but a lot of the complaints come from women who are claiming that they didn't receive a letter, never read a newspaper, never watched the TV news, never heard anybody else mention it. Were they all online and internet savvy long before most others were, even though they never had time for, or interest in, turning on the TV or glancing through newspaper headlines?

There's certainly a lot of band wagon jumping from people who DID know about it all, but just didn't like it or didn't agree with it. They're the ones getting over-excited about this ruling because they think they're in line for compo of tens of thousands (i.e. the amount of lost pension or extra NIC they suffered due to the changes). That's not going to happen. Any compensation will be pretty trivial if it's across the board to all those impacted - it's not for having to wait longer or having to pay NIC for longer, it's only for poor communication of the changes. A bit like a bank giving a token £50 when they make a mistake!

This is probably going to be an unpopular opinion! A state pension is an unemployment benefit for those who are too old to work. It’s not a government-funded savings plan which is how many women were using it, or getting work done on the house. If you are receiving a state pension while still working, you don’t need your pension. The change to the pension age was long overdue and women were the engineers of their own demise.

I also don’t think the younger generations should have to pay compensation. We will have a shorter and less healthy retirement than the WASPIs.

Now we have women soldiering on at work even after they know they've had enough

There are plenty of men struggling to continue work in their 60s too.

The population is rapidly ageing, and life expectancy is increasing. There will be fewer and fewer working-age people, supporting more and more older people. Younger generations cannot carry the burden of half the population retiring at 60 and then living another 30 years.

If anyone should be compensated it's men. Who have a shorter average lifespan and worked till 65 when women retired at 60. Don't think the So called Waspi women should get a penny,.

How do they decide? We're back to having to have evaluations as to your physical ability, akin to the existing system for claiming disability benefits to determine who's eligible.

Or we have a system where you can claim state pension early, but at a smaller amount, the opposite of the current system where you can delay and get a bigger amount.

How do you see the system working??

Agree with this 100% - so tone deaf and insulting to younger generations that also have care responsibilities.

Agree, and also with PPs saying that the changes were well-publicised. I was only in my 20s, so obviously I was never going to get old or need a pension, and was paying fuck-all attention to the issue, but I still knew. I remember women grumbling about it at the time.

I very much agree that women (or men) undertaking caring responsibilities should not miss out with pensions, but this isn't the way to go about it.

I very much agree in principle. How easy it would be to make it work in practice could be quite a different matter.

You would also need to adjust for those with disabilities and health conditions which could force them to have to give up work sooner (if they are able to work in the first place, when younger) - and of course make payments equitable to take into account where those disabilities and health conditions are likely to lead to the people living with them dying significantly earlier than average - often well before pension age.

That said, none of this was (or is) ever likely to happen whilst the people making the decisions were sitting at a desk in a nice warm office and not operating a 'widowmaker' drill down a pit. Turkeys voting for Christmas and all that.

I'm only a few years younger than WASPI women, and I've always been aware I wouldn't be entitled to state pension until my late sixties.
I agree they shouldn't be compensated just because they can't get their pension when they expected -if that causes them financial difficulty, the answer is to keep working longer, like it is for everyone else.
Those who are not able to work because of ill health should be supported financially - just like younger people who are not able to work.

It is slightly annoying for those of us that prioritised buying a house over putting money into pension in the late 1970s, as my pension would have done nicely, but, luckily, the house did even better so I'm not going to grumble. But for those that didn't have that option, if they knew when they left school that they'd have to work longer to pension, would they have considered depositing some of their hard earned money in a private pension back then? I do know my brother (worked in pensions at the time) suggested it to me, saying I could retire at 55 -as he did - but I didn't have the cash at the time to invest.