Court case sparked pension age changes

WITHOUT wishing to enter into an argument about the rights and wrongs of the loss of pensions to women born in the 1950s, I would just like to clarify a point made by Janet Fisk in her letter (WM, October 9).

She states the government decided in 1995 to increase the retirement age for women to 65 – in line with the retirement age for men. However, this was not done on some whim. It was the result of a court case brought before the European Court of Human Rights by a British man who claimed it was fundamentally unfair for women to get their state pension at the age of 60 while men had to wait to 65 – especially as women tend to live longer than men.

The judges agreed with him and the British Government was forced to change the law to equalise the age at which state pension was paid. They had the choice to give pensions to everyone at age 60 or to everyone at age 65 – the important thing was that men and women were treated equally. Bearing in mind the increase in longevity within the population, the Government decided the new retirement age for both men and women would be 65. Bringing the age down to 60, as advocated by Ms Fisk, was unaffordable even then and would be catastrophic to the public finances by now.

This new retirement age for women has been phased in over an extended period and I am surprised that people – especially women – were not aware of these changes as they were very well publicised at the time. I am also a woman born in the 1950s and my pension age was raised as part of the phasingin process. But I was aware of the situation and I also received several pension forecasts from the Pension Service.

Perhaps the big failing here is that during the 13 years when Labour was in power from 1997 to 2010, nothing was done to alert women of the impending loss of pension entitlement.

The present government is being blamed for something that is not of its making – it did not bring in the change in pension age and it was not in power when preparations for this should have been happening. Jayne Isaac Maesteg