Women take fight for pensions at 60 back to the courts

A LANDMARK case starting today will decide if millions of older women are entitled to their state pension earlier than men.

The case at the Court of Appeal involves two women in their 60s, Julie Delve and Karen Glynn, who have been affected by the changes to the state pension age.

Women’s retirement age has increased from 60 to 65, in line with men. However, that is increasing to 66 for both sexes and ultimately to 68.

The changes affect around 3.8 million women born in the 1950s, who say they were not given sufficient notice that they face waiting up to six years for their state pension.

Campaign

Ms Delve and Ms Glynn, members of the campaign group Backto60, took the Department for Work and Pensions to court in 2019, saying the changes were discriminatory on the grounds of sex, age and both sex and age combined.

They also said they were not given adequate notice of the changes.

But the High Court ruled on October 3 that the increase in the state pension age was not discriminatory.

The Backto60 group launched a campaign to raise £72,000 to bring an appeal.

They say the changes were made so quickly the women were left with no time to make alternative plans. The impact has pushed the number of older women workers up record high, new figures show.

Almost one million women aged between 60 and 64 were still working at the end of 2019 – a huge rise on the 644,674 recorded at the end of 2009, research found. This contrasts to

aProtests outside the High Court last October after a bid to reverse the changes to the state pension age failed

with an increase of 127,882, or 13 per cent, in the number of men working aged between 60 and 64 over the same period, a study by the over-50s website Rest Less has found. Stuart Lewis, founder of Rest Less, said: “The rapid increase in the women’s state pension age has forced many women to have to go out and look for work in their 60s.

“This has resulted in an increase in the number of women aged between 60 and 64 in work by 345,000, or 55 per cent, between 2010 and 2019.

“Tragically, it has also resulted in a large increase in the unemployment levels of women in this age group – up 128 per cent.

“In the last recession, women could retire at 60 – today it’s 66.

“This is of particular concern in the post-pandemic climate with mass redundancies looming and age discrimination rife.”

The Pensions Act 1995 legislated for the changes while the Pensions Act 2011 accelerated the rise.

The Government has previously stated that reversing the hike back to the age of 60 for women would cost taxpayers more than £180billion.

The hearing is expected to finish tomorrow.