No payout for WASPI women

[ErrolTheDragon]

Fury as women hit by pension age rise denied payouts www.bbc.com/news/articles/czr36842nd6o

Wow... it hadn't occurred to me that the ombudsman report on this would just be ignored.

I appreciate the battles that women fought which got us the 1975 Sex Discrimination Act and everything else that earlier generations fought for, like the vote.

But the WASPI women's argument seems to be 'nobody told me anything', when they seem to have made no effort to find things out for themselves. The 2011 Act affected everyone born after 6 December 1953, men as well as women. Have men also been complaining that nobody told them they wouldn't be able to retire at 65 as they originally thought?

Indeed. Certainly nobody has been stopping women from independently using the Internet or a phone since 2011.

You might have got more NI credits than you think. If you were claiming child benefit, you should have got some NI credits automatically. There's information about it here:
National Insurance credits: Eligibility - GOV.UK
and here (for before 2010 - you may have to make a claim to convert this to NI credits)
Home Responsibilities Protection: Eligibility - GOV.UK

You can get a pension forecast online to tell you what your pension will be and how you can improve it.

But it is true that many women have often left most of this stuff to their husbands - especially if they married young and had children young.

Why? Is it because their husbands were older so they made the assumption that they must know more about it simply because they were older? Or something else?

I'm afraid I really don't get this idea that men must somehow know more about this stuff simply by virtue of being men. Men are no more likely than women to understand finance.

Also this:
she's tended to leave financial planning and so on to those who know what they are doing with it, or who feel comfortable with it.

Why the reluctance to learn? Nobody knows this stuff without learning it. And it's possible to become comfortable with it if you're willing to put the effort in to learn. If you insist on leaving it to someone else you're unlikely to get an optimal outcome.

The 2011 Act affected everyone born after 6 December 1953, men as well as women. Have men also been complaining that nobody told them they wouldn't be able to retire at 65 as they originally thought?

You’re comparing two different situations here. The 2011 Act did not affect women’s retirement - specifically those women born between April and December 1953 - in the same way that it did men.

I think that, under present circumstances, it’s understandable why the Government isn’t making payments to WASPI women, even though some were genuinely disadvantaged by poor communication of some changes. What I find less understandable is the lack of empathy or common feeling towards those who, for a number of reasons, were affected, saying they are entirely to blame for their situation, when the ombudsman’s report says otherwise.

In my case, my husband is 19 years older than me, and I met him when i was still at university. I was already a single parent, having my first child at 19......so yes, he tended to take care of that side of things, and I trusted him to. It does worry me, now.... I'm gradually trying to get to grips with things because he'll probably die before I do. He's never lorded it, though......he's always been very equitable and we've shared a joint account. I'm actually the dominant partner in most respects.

As for my friend, she's never felt really comfortable with the material side of things. She's an artist and alternative therapist - never really had a conventional job - and like me had children young. She's gradually getting to grips with it all...but it is has been scary and painful for her. She's coming up for 70 now.....lives alone.......runs a B&B.....and relies on an inheritance from her mother for her pension ( she now lives in the U.S. She's American)

It's also relevant that the UK has one of the lowest old-age pensions in Europe.

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn00290/#:~:text=A%20comparison%20of%20state%20pension,the%20OECD%20average%20of%2061.4%25.

However, the relative position of pensioners converges if income from all sources is considered. Income from occupational and personal pensions is a relatively important source of pensioner income in the UK, in contrast to many other countries where state provision (financed either through social insurance contributions or general taxation) is dominant.

I've added this in as context from the above report. It's pretty important and shows the danger of " lowest pension in Europe" statements.

This thread is about state provision for old people. Our state pensions are among the lowest in Europe. Not everyone has the option of an occupational pension, and most are partly funded by the individuals themselves. Personal pensions are funded by individuals from their own resources.

But many countries don't have state pensions in way we do, the systems are so different it's almost impossible to compare. The system is a mix of private/state pension. Hence the statement "the lowest in Europe" is incorrect. Set aside the graph in report has limited countries in and makes a number of assumptions.

I remember that at the time getting information out of the DWP about the pension forecast , the number of years contributions needed , and whether you should buy in years was practically impossible. Not to mention that for many years after the decisions had been taken the Gov website still stated the pension age for women was 60. I was told that I needed 30 years but then discovered too late that the figure had changed. And it did not seem worth buying more as the cost had also changed. Likewise if you could afford to lave it dormant for a few years , before this could be a very good idea but later the interest rate was much lower, again not worth it. I was told I would get the full pension but with SERPs and not enough years, that was not true. None off it was clear..

Agreed, @Ramblingnamechanger . Even a couple of years ago, it was so difficult to know how to find the information we needed, & then difficult again to access it, that there was a thread on MN in which women shared information & experiences to help one another get through the system.

IIRC we needed special phone numbers to access a couple of different governrnent departments in the correct order asking for specific things by name (which we didn't know until told on here), giving one department the info we'd got from the other one in order to get the next bit of info to take back to the first, etc. Phone wait times were swopped so we knew what to expect. How anybody managed without The Sisterhood of MN, I've no idea. I only got through it thanks to the help I got on here.

All of this had to be done in order to find out which years of NI were missing & pay to make them up, in order to get the full SP. And, as I said upthread, I was eventually told that the year I needed to make up would've been cheaper if I'd used the 'exemptions' (I think they were called) which had just run out of time. I had no idea that these exemptions existed, what they were or how they worked.

I think it's a bit easier to find the information now @ifIwerenotanandroid.

I wanted to know what my current position was a couple of years ago and I managed to do it all online including making some payments by bank transfer.

They do advise you to speak to someone to check that you need to make the payments, before you risk making unnecessary payments (because you already have enough contributions, or are likely to have them before retirement). I decided I knew what I was doing and just made some payments.

Most people will not have realised it affected them. I was born in 1950 and retired with an occupational pension and state pension in 2010, losing just over 1 month of my state pension.

Women have been hugely impacted by this change in pension age. Men used to retire at 65 and women at 60, the idea being that married couples would retire at roughly the same time as the average age difference was five years. Men lost a year's pension but the levelling up for women to the male age of retirement + one year more meant a loss of 6 years' pension. This is a substantial loss and one not expected. I am politically active and I did not realise the implications of the 1995 Act, so very many women will not have realised till later. They should be compensated because women routinely have lower pensions than men because we take time out to bear and rear children (which may be a choice but society would be in a right pickle did we not make it) and the loss of 6 years of a pension impoverishes us more.

Most of the women affected by this will not have voted for Labour in 2019.

It's a bit much for these people to claim that today's Labour government should be bound by promises made in a manifesto that was rejected by the electorate.

women routinely have lower pensions than men because we take time out to bear and rear children

Women claiming child benefit can claim NI credits for their pension, so I don't think they lose out because of this (I don't know how this works in practice though, and whether those women can end up with a full pension). But that's a separate issue to the WASPI claim that they weren't informed about the changes.

I don't understand what you mean by "the loss of 6 years of a pension". Nobody's lost anything. Women now have to wait until the same age as men to receive their pension. What is surprising is how long it took to equalise the pension age. Women tend to live longer than men, and it always seemed absurd to me that women should able to claim their pension earlier.

Loss of years of pension doesn't impoverish anyone if they keep working.

I had a look at the link you posted a couple of days ago, about being able to claim NI contributions for the years you were receiving child benefit and not in paid employment ......but the link suggests quite restricted circumstances in which this would apply.

I imagine the retirement age differentials were due to the fact it was thought that most couples had a few years age gap - with the man tending to be older...and that women, maybe, had more and ongoing domestic and familial responsibilities than men?

Not everyone is in a position to keep working. I was lucky in that I could, but my friend who was a carer for her husband and my other friend who had a debilitating health condition could not, for that extra year or so that they had to wait.
Both had worked and paid their full NI.

I imagine the retirement age differentials were due to the fact it was thought that most couples had a few years age gap - with the man tending to be older...and that women, maybe, had more and ongoing domestic and familial responsibilities than men?

Espicially with retired husbands at home, possibly in poor health, and expecting to be waited on hand and foot.

The first link I posted said that (after 2010) anyone who was looking after children and getting child benefit would get NI credits automatically.

Your situation on or after 6 April 2010
You’re a parent or guardian registered for Child Benefit for a child under 12 (even if you do not receive it)
You get Class 3 credits automatically

Pre 2010 you should have got Home Responsibilities Protection (HRP) automatically which was converted later into NI credits.

Home Responsibilities Protection (HRP) was a scheme to help protect parents’ and carers’ State Pension. National Insurance credits replaced HRP in 2010.
You’ll have received HRP automatically if between 6 April 1978 and 5 April 2010 you were claiming:

• Child Benefit for a child under 16
• Income Support because you were looking after a sick or disabled person and were not available for work

You’ll need to apply for HRP if you think it’s missing from your National Insurance (NI) record.

Any HRP you had for full tax years before 6 April 2010 was automatically converted into National Insurance credits, if you needed them, up to a maximum of 22 qualifying years.

I'm not an expert on this, but it looks as though it's worth checking that you have the credits if this applies to you.

“I don't understand what you mean by "the loss of 6 years of a pension". Nobody's lost anything. Women now have to wait until the same age as men to receive their pension. What is surprising is how long it took to equalise the pension age. Women tend to live longer than men, and it always seemed absurd to me that women should able to claim their pension earlier.”

well my partner got hers at 60 ..I had to wait till 63 + so not so bad as others but when I imagined I would receive the same as her and 3+ years meant approximately 25k less it certainly feels like a loss. And when people say the country cannot afford it, measure the gap between average earnings and even the higher rate pension. So it’s ok to give money to certain groups but not others. Women always lose out, whatever we do. That is how the patriarchy operates.

Women always lose out, whatever we do. That is how the patriarchy operates.

I'm a feminist but this kind of stuff even makes me balk. Young people will be well into their 70s (if they're lucky) before they can retire. Is that the patriarchy too? Or is it simply because we have an ageing population and we can't afford it.

And we really can't afford it. We're dealing with unprecedented levels of national debt, our economy is stalling, we have the highest tax bill on record and our public services are stripped to the bone. Where is the money coming from?

None of that has anything to do with the statement you’re arguing with. That poster was absolutely right, I’ve spent my entire adult life watching the patriarchy shit on women. The only difference in its most recent iteration is that it’s shitting on all of us.

Tangential but related: Women died before receiving justice re: equal pay. Too many unions and others colluded in it for literally decades. Even when the issue went to Strasbourg and the women were vindicated, councils announced that they couldn't afford to pay women as it would deprive the population of much-needed services.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4998283-dying-without-ever-getting-their-historic-equal-pay

There are times when justice seems heavily skewed against those oppressed by various industrial and social forces.

@Grammarnut

The mean age difference between heterosexual couples has varied over time, though within a relatively narrow range: the mean gap in 1901 marriages was 2.2 years, it rose to a peak value of 3.2 in 1947, declined to 2.5 in 1970.

taken from:

https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/34801/1/PT120AgeDifference.pdf

Don’t invent figures.