Western Daily Press (Saturday)
Women celebrate pensions victory
Campaigners get go-ahead to challenge government in High Court:
WOMEN affected by changes to the state pension age have won the first stage of their High Court challenge against the Government.
Dozens of affected women celebrated outside the Royal Courts of Justice after their claim that they were unlawfully discriminated against was allowed to proceed.
Three women who were born between 1950 and 1953 claim the raising of their pension age from 60 to 66 discriminates against them on the grounds of their age and sex, and that they were not properly informed of the changes in time to adjust.
They have been supported by women across the West Country, including dozens who gathered in Gloucester yesterday, delivering a letter to the city’s Tory MP Richard Graham.
Michael Mansfield QC, representing the claimants, told the High Court that the changes affected “a minimum of 3.8 million women”, some of whom were given as little as 18 months’ notice.
At a hearing in London yesterday, Mrs Justice Lang said the women’s case was “arguable” and granted permission for their claim to proceed to a full hearing.
The Government introduced changes to the state pension age – most recently in 2011 – in an attempt to ensure ‘pension age equalisation’, so that women’s pension age matched that of men.
But Mr Mansfield said those women affected, who would have to wait up to six years longer for their pension, had been left in a “powerless” position, adding: “Suddenly they have to retrain, suddenly they have to find a new job.”
He suggested the Government had “made it clear that the real object of this exercise has been cost-cutting and saving money”, and that there was “no question of policy principle here”.
Catherine Rayner, also representing the claimants, said the changes meant that “£5.3 billion (has been) saved from women”.
She said the women’s previous pension age was “a fundamental part of the financial make-up of their lives”.
She added that the changes had a “significant adverse impact, impacting only on women – and only women – who were in the cohort born in the early 1950s”.
Julian Milford, for the Department for Work and Pensions, said the changes were intended to bring about “the equalisation between genders of the age of entitlement for the state pension” and to “ensure as a matter of inter-generational fairness that working age taxpayers were not asked to shoulder an unreasonable funding burden”.
Self-employed Maud Lomberg, aged 62, from Cirencester, Gloucestershire, has been campaigning on the issue for several years.
She claims to have lost £52,000 in pension payments as a result of the move to put back the age. She also says she was given only three years’ notice.
After the hearing yesterday, she said: “It has turned my dreams into a nightmare. I had plans not to be working, to be enjoying my life – but I’m still working and I was forced to live with decisions I made thinking I would be retiring at the age of 60.
“The engine went on my van in 2011. If I knew I’d still be working now I may have bought myself a new
I had plans not to be working, to be enjoying my life – but I’m still working MAUD LOMBERG
van instead of a temporary situation.”
David Drew, Labour MP for Stroud, has been supporting the women.
He said: “Having backed the 1950s women’s struggle for state pension justice for a long time I’m very pleased at the judgement in their favour. The Government must now respond positively.”