Anger at pensions blow for 4million women
MILLIONS of women are up to £50,000 out of pocket after the High Court rejected their appeal against ministers’ handling of the rise in the women’s state pension age.
Yesterday’s ruling means up to four million women must keep working after ministers raised their state pension age from 60 to 66.
Tearful protesters chanted ‘shame on you’ outside the court in London, after judges rejected their argument that the policy was discriminatory based on age, adding that even if it was, ‘it could be justified’.
After the ruling, the claimants’ barrister, Michael Mansfield QC, said many women born in the 1950s were now ‘on the brink of survival’.
The claimants said they were never informed about the plan to increase their state pension age, and found out they would have to carry on working for up to six more years just months before they were due to turn 60.
Those affected have lost out on up to £50,000 each, with officials estimating that the cost of reversing the adjustment would cost more than
£180billion. Two women – Julie Delve, 61, and Karen Glynn, 63 – brought the legal challenge, arguing the changes were discriminatory on the grounds of age and sex, and they were not given adequate notice.
But two High Court judges dismissed their claims on all grounds. Campaigners vowed to ‘fight on’ and said they were considering an appeal.
The age at which women can claim their state pension – £168.60 a week – used to be 60. But since 2011, it has been gradually increased, and in November last year it came level with the men’s pension age of 65 for the first time. By next year, the qualifying age for both sexes will be 66.
Mr Mansfield said the Government had ‘pushed women who were already disadvantaged into the lowest class you can imagine’. He added: ‘They’re on the brink of survival, and I’m not overstating that.
‘This group – especially the percentage of the group affected born in 1953 onwards – are increasingly having taken away from them four to six years’ worth of state pension.
‘We’re dealing with very serious sums: £37,000 to £47,000. I think any citizen would be concerned by that withdrawal.’
Earlier this year, Money Mail revealed how the Government publicised the changes in a series of baffling newspaper and magaState zine advertisements, featuring dogs and Monopoly boards, that appeared in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
But judges Lord Justice Irwin and Mrs Justice Whipple noted the new pension laws did not include a provision to notify the affected women, and ministers were not legally required to do so.
Joanne Welch, of the BackTo60 campaign, which supported the claimants, said the ruling was ‘ridiculous’. She added: ‘They told people about the TV licence, but we don’t need to know about our pensions? It’s an egregious constitutional disregard not to tell anyone. No private pension provider would get away with it.’
Anne Keen, 66, from Liverpool, co-founder of the Women Against Pension Inequality (WASPI) campaign, said she found out about the changes 13 months before she planned to retire at 60.
Outside court, she said: ‘I’m absolutely appalled by today’s decision. You can see, hear and feel the anger. I retired in 2013 and lost out on around £20,000. Most of the women here today have lost close to £50,000. It’s a travesty.’
Campaigners argue that women born during the 1950s took time out of work to care for children, were paid less than men and could not save as much in occupational pensions, so the change had hit them harder.
Scottish members of WASPI gathered at the statue of political activist Mary Barbour in Govan, Glasgow, to await the ruling.
Rosie Dickson, co-coordinator of the Glasgow group, said: ‘It is an injustice. This is money that is coming out of our pockets. We won’t stand for it We will continue the fight.’
Fellow member Anne Potter, from Glasgow, said: ‘I am still having to work six years after I should have received my pension. It won’t be paid until I’m 66 when I thought and planned for it being 60.’
Nationalist MP Mhairi Black, a vocal campaigner against the retirement age changes, called on the UK Government to ‘undertake a full impact assessment on how successive UK governments have disadvantaged WASPI women’.
Barbara Cowlard, 65, an administrator from Kent, said she was never allowed to join a work pension scheme despite paying 48 years of National Insurance contributions.
The judges said they were ‘saddened by the stories contained in the claimants’ evidence’, but concluded that ‘wider issues’ about whether the Government’s actions ‘were right or wrong or good or bad were not for the court’.
In her submission to the court, Mrs Delve said she had thought she would start getting her state pension when she turned 60 last year. She only discovered she would not get it until she was 66 in 2015, after she overheard a conversation on the train to work.
Marcia Willis Stewart, of law firm Birnberg Peirce, which represented the claimants, described the pension age changes as a ‘substantial and far-reaching injustice’ and said she was ‘deeply disappointed’ by the judgment.
Jon Greer, head of retirement policy at Quilter, said: ‘It had been claimed that if the equalisation of state pension ages between men and women were to be reversed it could cost the Government in excess of £180 billion so... they will be very relieved.’
The Department for Work and Pensions said it welcomed the High Court judgment.
A spokesman said: ‘It has always been our view that the changes we made to women’s state pension age were entirely lawful and did not discriminate on any grounds.’