I’d tell them where to stick this insulting offer if I could afford to... We’ve been stitched up yet again
Message to ministers from scores of angry readers born in the 1950s:
MARION Sell is so angry at how little compensation she could receive for failings in the way changes to her state pension age were communicated that she’d like nothing more than to throw the money back in the Government’s face.
The 67-year-old, from Covingham, Wiltshire, is one of hundreds of women who have contacted Money Mail to vent their fury at last week’s ruling on compensation for ‘Waspi’ women — Women Against State Pension Inequality.
In a long-awaited ruling, the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) said that millions of women who were hit by state pension age increases had been failed by the
Government and could be owed compensation — but only of between £1,000 and £2,950 in the majority of cases, and exceeding £10,000 only in the most extreme.
Campaigners for the Waspi group have branded the proposed compensation as ‘insulting’ — and want a minimum of £10,000. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has indicated it will ‘refuse to comply’ with making any payments, according to the Ombudsman.
Marion is among those who did not receive so much as a letter from the DWP informing her of the rise to her state pension age.
‘learning I would be waiting for six more years for my pension was a real kick in the teeth — and I heard about it only from friends,’ she says.
‘Women born in the 1950s have been stitched up every which way after a lifetime of wage inequality, and it makes me furious.
‘A couple of thousand or so is just an insult as compensation — and if I could afford it, I would tell them where to stick it.’
Marion, who lives with her second husband, Robert, 67, didn’t work while her children were growing up, and also suffered a serious financial setback after her divorce from her first husband in 1988 — meaning she struggled to survive, never mind save money for retirement.
She says: ‘ Before I had the children I had low-paid office jobs — partly because employers thought I might leave to have children. It may sound sexist, but that’s how life was for many women in the 1970s.
‘After my divorce, it was a real struggle to pay the mortgage on the family home, and I was threatened with eviction, so I did lots of part-time secretarial work just to pay the bills and keep a roof over our heads.
‘There wasn’t the money to put into a private pension.
‘The hardships many women in my generation went through has not been considered.’
‘PAYOUT IS SO VERY DISAPPOINTING’
CAROle WHyATT, 66, says that even if she does receive the recommended compensation, it would only go towards her bills and is nothing compared with what she has lost because of the DWP’s poor communication.
‘even if I were to receive £2,950 as the suggested compensation, it would work out at less than £500 for every year of planned retirement,’ she says.
‘It’s enough to go towards the electricity bill, but very little else. I am furious about the way we have been treated.’
The mother-of-two said she was unable to make up the missing pension because of the lack of notice she was given.
Carole says: ‘I was livid because I was relying on my state pension coming the following year.’ She believes she missed out on £54,000 in the six years her state pension was delayed. She says of the compensation: ‘It is bitterly disappointing.’
Carole says she has waved goodbye to a modest but well-earned retirement with her chef husband Paul, 74 — the couple had planned to spend a couple of weeks a year in the French region of Dordogne, enjoying its cuisine and wine.
‘All those years of dreaming — I had even studied French in preparation for those future holidays,’ she says.
Carole, from Oldham in Greater Manchester, says she found out about the change to her retirement age only when a relative casually informed her about it over lunch a few months before she’d expected to retire.
‘In one fell swoop we were cruelly robbed of our retirement dreams,’ she says.
‘Instead, it was going to be a case of watching the pennies to pay the bills. Any ideas of holidays flew out the window and, sadly, we still have not been able to go back to France.’
Carole had suffered a terrible couple of years of ill health before expecting to retire at 60.
After being treated for breast cancer at the age of 58, the following year she spent three months in hospital after a supposedly routine gallstone operation ended up with complications.
This all meant she had to give up her job as a government funding consultant.
‘I SHOULD BE GETTING £10,000’
ANNe CAMPBell, 67, was just one year away from retiring when she discovered she would have to wait another six years to receive her state pension.
She only found out in 2015 when she attended a public meeting with her MP at her local church.
Anne estimates that she has missed out on £48,000 worth of state pension — and that a mere £1,000 compensation will do little to make up for that. She says: ‘I feel deflated. It’s not enough to compensate me for the lack of communication. A higher amount, such as £10,000, would be more reasonable.
‘I want the DWP to hold up their hands and say sorry. If they acknowledged it at the beginning, it would have made it a bit more bearable.’ The mother- of-two, from Falkirk in Scotland’s Central lowlands, had planned to retire at the age 60 to care for her mother who had dementia and her daughter who was suffering from cervical cancer.
Anne says: ‘It was a real shock — just horrendous. I needed to retire to look after my mum, my daughter and grandson, but had to keep working full time. And
then my own health started to decline as a result.’ Anne reluctantly continued to work as a community and development worker until she was made redundant at the age of 62.
But she lived in fear of her bank balance dipping into the red, even with her workplace pension topping up her redundancy package.
‘ It significantly reduced my
quality of life. I always worried about whether I was going to have any money left at the end of the month,’ she says.
‘INJUSTICE MAKES ME SO ANGRY’
RetIRed project manager Barbara Silver, 69, says: ‘It’s the sense of injustice — of being wronged — that makes me particularly angry. I started work at 16 and worked for 47 years, with only a short break when my son was born in the early 1980s.
‘ I went through a difficult divorce and raised him on my own, but I never missed any National Insurance payments. So, all that I want is what is due.’
Barbara, who lives in Mill Hill,
North London, adds: ‘Working as a project manager in the construction industry, I had to survive in a male-dominated world — where wages are not always equal between men and women, even now — so pensions were not so generous.
‘My heart really goes out to those who have fought so hard and did not have the benefit of a
private pension on top of a state pension required to survive.
‘I took early retirement at 63 to look after my father, who has since passed away. Had I relied solely on the state pension we were promised, I could not have provided the care he needed. It would have been heartbreaking.’