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 )

Many women received and still continue to receve less state pension because they had/have caring responsibilities ( children, elderly) and did/do not work outside of the home; and if they did it was P/T, casual and /or low paid.

You are judging previous generations by the standards of today. And you are imagining that everyone is middle class and/or wealthy.

Even in the 1970s and 1980s only middle class people went to university. University was for the elite. In 1972 the school leaving age was still 15 years old - and most people left after O Levels or CSE's and went straight into employment.Married women were compelled to give up their jobs as late as the early 1970s - in many types of occupation.

People didn't calculate whether they could "afford" children, they just had them. There was no expectation of a 'lifestyle'. Most people did not have a car; did not have foreign holidays; there was less of a consumer culture; people didn't live beyond their means; there were no credit cards . If you wanted household items you bought them out of a catalogue -and paid the cost back over 20 - 52 weeks.

People who were fortunate enough to own their home ( many people were still living council housing) may have been lucky compared to today - but houses require maintenance if you want to maintain their value, and maintenance is expensive. You typically see lots of elderly people now living in a crumbling, deteriorating 'old person's house' - still with single glazing and rotten windowsills. But, yes, maybe their children might get something out of that when they die.

And of course, those lucky enough to have big pension pots still have to pay tax on withdrawals - sometimes at 40%.

@PBJsandwich123 .
Yet again the old war cry 'you had free university education'.
In 1970 5.8% of school leavers went to university.
Only 42% of that 5.8% were women.
You had to be very bright to go to university then (and no one was studying marketing or media studies)
It leaves about 98% of women starting work at 15 or 16.
I'm not sure that they felt terribly advantaged by the tiny number that got the free education. Stop pretending that everyone went to university free.

Difference is that back then, people didn't "need" a degree for the same kinds of jobs where a degree is a minimum requirement today, so the goalposts have changed.

user1477391263 · Today 02:47
'The reason why most of us are rolling our eyes about the WASPI women is that most of them, almost by definition, are women who had the means to retire early and did so.

If you were a normal human being, this misunderstanding would never have happened to you, because you would have just kept on working, which would have resulted in your automatically being aware of your SPA.'

The reason most of you are rolling your eyes about the WASPI women appears to be that you're unaware of facts & history. This then leads naturally to erroneous statements like the second paragraph.

Do please do some research. "Oh, it wouldn't have happened like that because it just wouldn't," doesn't cut the mustard. Nor does, "Well I think websites are updated quickly, so this website I've never looked at would've been updated quickly 12 years ago" etc etc.

Has anybody thought that perhaps there's an alternative to fighting like rats in a sack for a share of the total spend, & that's to increase the amount of money available, through inventions & new industries & companies, new services, new exports, new ways of making money?

The alternative is to accept that the country is done for. That's a bit depressing.

I agree.

All I seem to hear about is "tax the rich" to pay for shovelling more money into public services.

Hear very little about actually growing the economy by making more, getting more people working, inventions and innovation, etc - it always seems to be "someone else" who has to pay and "someone else" who has to actually do the work.

There were not the numbers of women in many of the sorts of jobs that you now require a degree for. Women tended to be in 'women's jobs': Teaching, nursing, retail, secretarial, child care, elder care, hairdressing, factory work, and so on - and not so many at managerial level in those jobs either.

The whole thing is a mess and no one linked the existing laws about compulsory retirement etc at 60 and what would happen to those women who fell between not able to work (because of the law) but not able to get their pension (because of the law)

People are presuming that today’s laws and access to information and the ability to link up with people going thorough the same thing applied in the 80s and 90s and even the early 2000s and not appreciating how isolated people were.

Look at the post office scandal. Without Facebook and realising that they as individual post office managers were suddenly not alone and what was happening to them, despite being told they were the anomaly was happening up and down the country.

Not a Waspi but very nearly. I haven’t received a single letter ever about pensions. I just think I will work till I drop. I have looked into things and found I probably won’t qualify for a state pension and the company pension I paid into was used by the company

Ypu seem to be under the impression that everyone because of age gets a state pension

Interesting use of the word 'need' as well. The state doesn't determine if you 'need' your pension based on your financial situation, it decides based on your age.

It’s not a government-funded savings plan which is how many women were using it, or getting work done on the house

I have no idea what this means. Really, I haven't. The state doesn't mandate how you use your state pension, either, whether that's for savings, work on the house or funding a toy boy (altho he'd prob cost more than the annual SP).

The whole thing is a mess and no one linked the existing laws about compulsory retirement etc at 60 and what would happen to those women who fell between not able to work (because of the law) but not able to get their pension (because of the law)

The compulsory retirement age was scrapped in 2011 so wouldn't have applied to the WASPI women.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/default-retirement-age-to-end-this-year

It seems that prior to this the retirement age was set at 65. I can't find anything about a lower age for women.

Not a Waspi but very nearly. I haven’t received a single letter ever about pensions. I just think I will work till I drop. I have looked into things and found I probably won’t qualify for a state pension and the company pension I paid into was used by the company

I'm also a bit younger than the WASPIs and I've never had a letter about pensions apart from when I asked for a pension forecast. If you want to know if you'll get a state pension (or how much you'll get) you can apply for a pension forecast here:
https://www.gov.uk/check-state-pension

If you've been working in the UK you'll have been paying NI so you'll qualify for some pension even if it's not the full amount.

Compulsory retirement age for women was 60 in 1995 when it was announced that women would have to work till 65 to get a pension
It wasn’t until 2011 that compulsory retirement was scrapped and women could work till 65
It wasn’t exactly joined up thinking and left women wondering how they were expected to work yet would be forcibly retired and couldn’t claim their pension for 5 years

As I haven’t worked for years, I am not expecting a state pension and my company pension I paid into for years when I did work wasn’t protected so that is long gone

I'm just younger than the waspi women, and I don't understand how anyone can claim they weren't informed. It was everywhere at the time, from Radio 4 to Women's Weekly. TV news programs, front page of every newspaper. My sisters all received multiple letters. It was included in every pensions briefing at work.

A person would have had to live under a rock on a desert island not to have known it was happening.

Maybe they weren't interested at the time. Maybe they thought pensions were boring and a long way off and took no notice but I just don't see any reason for compensation. Sorry, I usually back every campaign to support women but not this one.

You don't have to be working to get national insurance credits for your state pension. You get them automatically if you have been receiving certain benefits.

https://www.gov.uk/national-insurance-credits/eligibility

Maybe they weren't interested at the time. Maybe they thought pensions were boring and a long way off and took no notice but I just don't see any reason for compensation.

What you describe wouldn’t apply to Waspi women who were affected by the 2011 changes. They were very near retirement and many had plans in place when they found at very short notice that they would have to work for longer (in my case nearly two years). Some didn’t find out, because, contrary to what you say, it wasn’t widely publicised. I heard about it on Money Box and then double checked. Luckily for me, I was able to just keep working for longer. Others could not and suffered financially. That’s why compensation is the proper remedy, as the Ombudsman recommends.

My mother is a so called Waspi woman. I know full well that she was aware of the changes when they were announced.

Shes 100% in this campaign because she thought she’d get a nice big lump sum. Who doesn’t want that?

I cannot supper the claim for compensation. It’s not as though the information wasn’t out there, and it’s your personal responsibility to know about things that affect you.

I see the expression “so called” used a lot with regard to Waspi women. When you see this type of emotive language, you know there’s an agenda.
The Ombudsman thinks there wasn’t sufficient information given. Thinking one’s mother to be grasping and greedy doesn’t change that.

Compulsory retirement age for women was 60 in 1995 when it was announced that women would have to work till 65 to get a pension

At this point, the affected women were no older than 45.

It wasn’t until 2011 that compulsory retirement was scrapped and women could work till 65

At this point the affected women were no older than 60, and the pension age was increased gradually.

It wasn’t exactly joined up thinking and left women wondering how they were expected to work yet would be forcibly retired and couldn’t claim their pension for 5 years

This didn't happen. Any woman aged over 60 in 2011 was already getting her pension. Any woman under 60 could work to 65.

I am baffled who doesn't check their pension entitlement (both private and state) before they retire?

What a lot if this exposes is how woefully under informed a lot of women seem to be about pensions and retirement.

I am baffled who doesn't check their pension entitlement (both private and state) before they retire?

Women did check and made their plans. Then the government made changes at very short notice and didn’t communicate them properly, resulting in plans being inadequate, according to the Ombudsman, who recommends compensation.

I think many posters are wilfully misunderstanding this.

But surely you check again what you are entitled to before you leave a job?

I get that some nominal compensation for poor communication might be in order for some, but some of the tales of woe are a bit world's tiniest violin and not really cutting it with a generations staring down the barrel of a possible retirement age of 70 and shouldering the burden of massive student debt and runaway house price inflation.

And don't get me started on those wanging on about money "stolen" from them.

And don't get me started on those wanging on about money "stolen" from them.

Yes, this rhetoric is deliberately alarmist, and ignores the fact that government changes made over time do not equate to having had something taken from you that was never yours. However much you dislike it or feel that it's unfair, you can't claim that something you don't qualify for, that earlier generations did, has been 'stolen' from you.

Are people under 45 justified in complaining that their free university education has been 'stolen' from them?

My Grandad got a driving licence by just sending of for it in the post, before the driving test was brought in - does that mean that all of us who are younger (in fact almost everybody alive now) have had our money and rights 'stolen' from us, as we have to pay a lot out for lessons and tests before we are legally allowed to drive?

What about husbands who used to be legally allowed to beat their wives when they 'got out of line'? Have modern men had their basic rights as men 'stolen' from them?