Was it unfair to equalise the pension age?

A READER states that due to his wife’s retirement age being moved to 66 she has been ‘cheated’ out of £37,000 (Letters). What he does not consider is that the average age of death used to be in the 70s, so 40 years of National Insurance funded 20 years of retirement.

Now we are generally living into our 90s, so we are drawing more out of the pension scheme and therefore more has to be contributed. This can only be achieved by raising National Insurance contributions or the age of retirement.

JOHN MARTIN, Twickenham, S.W. London. I WAS interested in the recent comment about ‘pension victims’ and noticed some errors. The Pension Act to increase the women’s state pension age to make them equal with men was in 1995, giving lots of notice of the changes. This had nothing to do with Theresa May as she did not become an MP until 1997. With regards to National Insurance payments, until quite recently, this was 39 years for women and 44 years for men, so men were deprived of five years of pension payments, but still paid more in NI. The time to kick up a fuss was 1995, but it never happened. GRAHAM WHITLOCK, Spondon, Derby. I DON’T think it’s intrinsically wrong to equalise the retirement age — after all, in general women live longer. But it was the way it was done.

It was a jump of so many years when people had been making plans for retirement and knowing your friends of just a few months older had ridden off into the sunset with a fair pension, but you have to work six years more.

If it had been any other group — such as 25-year-old unemployed males — who had all their money snatched away, there would have been police cars burning in the streets. But they assumed with 55-year-old women they could just get away with it.

Name supplied, Berkshire.