by
Les May
WHEN
my wife got to sixty she got her State Retirement Pension (SRP).
When I got to sixty I had to wait another five years until I was
sixty five. Some months before she reached retirement age my wife
was contacted by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)
telling her what to do. Her pension was paid immediately after her
sixtieth birthday. Some months before I reached sixty five I
contacted the DWP to
set things in motion. My pension wasn’t paid immediately after my
birthday. In fact it was not paid until I had written to the DWP
twice to ask why I had not received it.
You
will perhaps understand that I am less than sympathetic to all the
whingeing from some women that they were not properly made aware that
the age at which they would receive their SRP was increasing.
Incidentally
these changes affected men too. As the age at which SRP was
paid was raised the age for receiving concessionary fares, a.k.a
The Bus Pass, tracked this. Previous to this the age had been
set at sixty in 2003, though men were still expected to continue
working up to the age of sixty five.
Finally
one woman has set the record straight. Writing in the ‘i’
a lady by the name of Kate Roberts writes;
‘I
can’t remember exactly when I found out that I would not be getting
my state pension at the age of 60 in 2011, but it was well before the
change was made.
I
doubt that I was unique in that – if something on the news or in
the papers may affect me, I take notice. I rang the helpline number
for a pension forecast, and was informed the changes were to be
incremental.
The
information was easily and freely available unless you lived in
darkest Peru. I do have sympathy for anyone who is struggling to
carry on working, but I really don’t see how it can still be coming
as a surprise.’
Kate
Roberts is quite right. The
Pensions Act 1995 contained
the following provisions:
Equalisation
of pensionable age and of entitlement to certain benefits
Schedule
4 to this Act, of which —
(a)
Part I has effect to equalise pensionable age for men and women
progressively over a period of ten years beginning with 6th April
2010,
(b)
Part II makes provision for bringing equality for men and women to
certain pension and other benefits, and
(c)
Part III makes consequential amendments of enactments,
shall
have effect.
Under the Pensions Act 2011,
women's State Pension age will increase more quickly to 65 between
April 2016 and November 2018. From December 2018 the State Pension
age for both men and women will start to increase to reach 66 by
October 2020.
Whilst the 2011 act accelerates
the rise in pensionable age for women so that the rise to sixty five
is completed two years earlier it is difficult to see how anyone can
complain that the rise has come as a surprise to them.
*******
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1 comment:
Les May fails to mention that another way to equalise the State Retirement Age (SRA) was to have dropped the SRA for men to 60 in line with women. Yet this was unlikely unless people fought for it. The Gov saw that it could comply with equality law by raising the retirement age for women.
The UK is reckoned to be the 5th richest country in the world and yet our State pension is one of the lowest among many European countries and we wait the longest to get one. People forget that it was the Tories that took us into Europe (Ted Heath) because they said Britain at the time was the "Sick Man of Europe." In a speech that he made in the early 1970s, Sir Keith Joseph asked why we (the UK) had the lowest wages in Europe, the lowest pensions and worked the longest hours and were less productive that other countries such as France and Germany. This is still the case and it certainly isn't because of our membership of the EU or the fault of immigration. At the time, the Tories said it was all the fault of 'Socialism' and the Labour Party. This UK isn't a poor country but it's poor when it comes to redistributing its wealth. It's about time people wised up and realised that austerity is ideological and an excuse to dismantle the social wage and the welfare state.
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