MPs take note: women like me are up in arms about the state pension
WE NEED to reverse the myth, perpetuated by various governments, that women born in the Fifties have taken insufficient steps to finance their retirement. Women of my age were looking after their families, so only able to work part-time; or, if working full-time, were not always allowed to join company pension schemes. To make matters worse, women like me have been denied the expected safety net of the state pension at the age of 60. I have yet to meet one woman who received the mysterious letter from the Department for Work and Pensions that was apparently sent to those affected by the rise in the state pension age. I have asked for a copy of the letter purportedly sent to me, but apparently they don’t keep those kind of records and can’t even tell me when it was sent. I have a full record of my tax assessments and correspondence about family credit and National Insurance that have been sent to me over the years, but not this very important letter. It should have been sent to me between October 2012 and November 2013. I had expected to retire at the age of 60 in 2017, so I was being given at the very most four-and-a-half years to finance the extra six years before I qualify for the state pension at the revised age of 66. At the age of 58, I was only made aware of the change of pension age affecting my generation when chatting to a friend, who urged me to request a pension forecast. I moved to Cyprus ten years ago when my husband retired, planning that we would have a comfortable life when I reached 60. We can’t afford to live back in Britain on my husband’s state pension of €650 (£586) per month. All the politicians do is to urge women my age to look for apprenticeships. But who would take on a 60-year-old apprentice? When one woman told her MP she could not afford to travel to see her family, he told her to use Skype to keep in touch. I know of other women who have lost their homes due to this pensions mismanagement. If politicians thought we were going to accept this quietly, we are not. Many women like me need this money. It is not a benefit, it is a right.
RUTH WALTON, Paphos, Cyprus. I WAS born in the Fifties and started work at 16. I worked for 45 years, taking the minimum amount of maternity leave and opted to pay a full NI stamp. In 2013, I requested a pension forecast and was shocked to find I would not get my state pension at 60, as I had expected, but would have to wait until I was 66. This was the first I had heard of it, as I never received any correspondence from the Department for Work and Pensions. Ironically, they have moved the goalposts again, and from now on people will need only 35 years to qualify for the higher pension I will eventually get. What has happened to all my National Insurance contributions?
JUNE MAY, Cwmbran, Torfaen.