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 guess if you believe your state pension age is 65 but you retire at 60 knowing you can provide for yourself for 5 years with your own funds and then you find out within that time period that you need to support yourself for an additional 2 years it might feel like an injustice. Some may have given up well paid jobs that they could have stuck with for a bit longer. It would be hard to go back and find decent work for a limited period of time. So it’s the notice period that appears to be the issue.

As someone who’s retirement age is 68 but unlikely to be fit enough to work that long I do have some sympathy with these women. I’ve planned financially to retire a bit early and would be gutted if the goalposts are moved again but I do also understand that we are an aging population and we can’t continue to expect young people to fund a system that they are unlikely to benefit from themselves.

Some of us were aware of the change from, in my case, 60 to 63. For me, though, there was another, later change (the acceleration) from 63 to 66 of which I was unaware. As far as I knew, the first change was the only one which would occur for me. I had no notification of the second change; and why would I expect another one, after the first seismic change to pension entitlements & when I was closer to claiming my pension?

When I did finally claim my pension, I needed to pay to make up one year's NI in order to get a full pension. I had to pay a higher price for it than I would have paid had I known about some special thing which had just run out of time & which I'd never heard of or been informed about. That's how people get rooked by the system. It's easy. It'll probably happen to all of you crowing on here, one way or another. Surely the best way to protect yourselves is to hold governments to account, not to blame each other.

Just today I found a 2021 article on something else affecting women badly vis a vis state pensions. It's a lulu but I'll have to do a bit more research to see how that panned out.

I guess if you believe your state pension age is 65 but you retire at 60 knowing you can provide for yourself for 5 years with your own funds and then you find out within that time period that you need to support yourself for an additional 2 years it might feel like an injustice.

That didn't happen though. I'm a bit younger than the WASPI women, and my state pension age is going to be less than 67. I knew this well before I was 60.

To me, it seems like some people are tribal enough in their politics to be sanguine about austerity budgets, WFA cuts and not paying WASPI women as long as it’s a Labour government that’s doing it.

These things are viewed as positive measures for the nation if carried out by good, Left wing MPs and viewed as nationally disastrous and immoral if carried out by nasty, Right wing MPs.

I don’t enjoy sanctimonious lectures on the poor state of the public purse from well-paid and well-reimbursed MPs of any party.

Same here. I missed the second change. Also, in spite of working and paying tax etc for 45 years I had to pay £6000 to top up my NI conts. Worth paying providing I live another 3 years.

Because something unfair isn’t against the laws of the land.

Why was it so unfair?

Wasn’t it just evening up the fact that women got paid much less than men and a lot of careers weren’t open to women, even after the equal pay act.

I agree that the goalpost moving on pensions by the government has been appalling. I've kept my letters about my pension from when I started asking for pension forecasts in the 90s (when I was in my 30s).

I have a letter saying I needed 39 years of contributions.

A few years later I got one saying I needed only 30 years.

A few years later I got another letter saying I needed 35 years (which I think is the current rate).

But if your pension age is 66, weren't you aware that the rate for men would also be increased to 66? Did you think this wouldn't apply to you?

Not a Labour voter.

Would much rather they fixed dentistry or tackled social care rather than chuck a grand at all these women.

But if your pension age is 66, weren't you aware that the rate for men would also be increased to 66? Did you think this wouldn't apply to you?

Sorry, I genuinely don't understand this. If you'd like me to try to answer, please clarify.

In case this helps: originally there was a sliding scale of increasing SP entitlement ages, depending on one's date of birth. This is how equal SP ages were supposed to be achieved between men & women in the UK. My SP age on that scale was 63.

If you paid full contributions for 45 years you should get a full pension without paying any top ups. If you need to top up it means you didn't pay the full contribution for some years. You might have paid the reduced married woman's stamp for some of them or you might have missed a few weeks worth of contributions in some years. Even missing one week of NI contributions in a year loses you the whole year's worth of contributions.

Did not have enough time? There was 15 years of warning that it would be raised from 60 to 65! And all it is doing is making the pension age equal between the sexes. The oldest women it would have applied to would have been in their late 30s when it was announced, that’s more than half a work life to prepare. Later generations regularly get shorter notice than waspi women as dates to implement the rise to 66,67,68 have been moved forward repeatedly.

“The Ombudsman found:

• DWP provided adequate and accurate information between 1995 and 2004;
• DWP decision-making between 2005 and 2007 led to a 28-month delay in starting to send letters to 1950s-born women about State Pension age changes and that;
• These delays were maladministration and the Ombudsman found they led to injustice but did not cause direct financial loss.”

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/response-to-phso-report-on-communication-of-changes-to-womens-state-pension-age

I never thought they would/should win this. However, as I'm in my 60s, pension talk is quite common with friends and colleagues. Plenty of people seem really clueless about how their pensions work so I'm not surprised there are a group of women affected by this who claim they knew nothing about it.

I was talking about this.

State Pension age timetable - GOV.UK

The original timescale from 1995 was changed with the 2011 Act.

If your pension age is 66 then you must have been born in 1954 or later.

Pension ages for men and women were equalised for anyone born after 6 December 1953.

It did happen. I was one of the ones it happened to.

The oldest women it would have applied to would have been in their late 30s when it was announced

Your maths needs checking. I’m not one of the oldest affected and I was 43 in 1995. I was nearly 60 in 2011 when the change was accelerated.

It’s happened to men and women, most I know have had to come out of retirement and go back to work. That’s why I have been saying there have been actual very short notice of pension age changes by the government that have caused direct financial shortfalls. There’s no compensation for these cases so why should waspi women feel entitled to compensation when they had 15yrs notice of the change and around 25-30yrs of notice until they reach the old & new pension age and suffered no direct financial shortfall?,

More atrocious maths. There wasn’t 15 years notice of the accelerated change in 2011, there was barely 18 months for some women.

If your state pension age is 67, you must have been born on 6th March 1961 or later.

This means you were 60 years old on 6th March 2021 or later.

The Pensions Act 2011 which said that you would receive your state pension at age 67 was passed in 2011 when you were 50 or younger.

This scenario couldn't have happened.

The changes in the Pensions Act 2011 only affected women retiring in 2016 or later according to this information.

State Pension age timetable - GOV.UK

Not 15 years, but it seems to be at least 4 or 5.

You are mistaken, there was notice starting in 1995 of the change in 2010 of pension age from 60 to 65 to equalise women with men
”The Ombudsman found:

• DWP provided adequate and accurate information between 1995 and 2004;
• DWP decision-making between 2005 and 2007 led to a 28-month delay in starting to send letters to 1950s-born women about State Pension age changes and that;
• These delays were maladministration and the Ombudsman found they led to injustice but did not cause direct financial loss.”

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/response-to-phso-report-on-communication-of-changes-to-womens-state-pension-age

I have said that every other pension age change has come with much less notice.

What part of the accelerated change with virtually no notice in 2011 are you failing to understand @SugarandSpiceandAllThingsNaice?

I think this is true. Most people seem to have no idea how either their state or company pensions work. They think that just paying whatever the default contribution is will guarantee them the pension they want.

So it's not surprising that there are lots of women who say they didn't know. But who is to blame for them not knowing? Because plenty of other women did know.

My mum was hugely affected by this - utterly screwed up her end of life budgeting. From around six months before she would have been due to retire, she finally heard on the news that retirement ages were being pushed back. She called DWP every month for an update for nearly three years…First, they couldn’t tell her if her retirement date was moving, then couldn’t confirm when it would be moving to. She’d already started winding down her business and couldn’t just ramp up extra contracts again (you try being an exercise instructor in your sixties - you don’t re-up your contract in the gym, they’re definitely giving it to someone younger and cheaper and no new gym is hiring you at that age). Just a complete slap in the face - a couple of grand wouldn’t have been close to the £60k+ she suddenly lost out on but it would have been recognition that she’d been a bit screwed over. I’m beyond upset for her.

Well the next budget I would not be surprised if it changes to 71 for both men and women.

What part of the waspi notice are you failing to understand? The post of mine you quoted saying “atrocious maths” was explicitly talking about the waspi case not the later 2011 stuff.