West Dunbartonshire WASPI women take their case to Jeremy Corbyn
Campaigner Louise Robertson (left) meets Labour leader Corbyn at the Labour Party Conference in Dundee.
By Bill Heaney
Increases in the State Pension age for women born in the 1950s was one of the many issues on the agenda at the Labour Party Conference in Dundee over the weekend.
Campaigner Louise Robertson was to the fore when the WASPI women lobbied the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, Jean Ann Mitchell, the prospective Labour parliamentary candidate for West Dunbartonshire and Paul Sweeney, the Springburn Labour MP, pictured below.
The Pensions Act 1995 provided for the State Pension age (SPA) for women to increase from 60 to 65 over the period April 2010 to 2020.
The Pensions Act 2011 was designed to accelerate the latter part of this timetable, starting in April 2016 when women’s SPA was 63, so that it would reach 65 in November 2018.
The equalised SPA would then rise to 66 by October 2020. The reason was increases in life expectancy since the timetable was last revised.
It was initially intended that the equalised SPA would then rise to 66 by April 2020.
However, because of concerns expressed at the short notice of significant increases for some women (as much as two years compared to the timetable in existing legislation) the Government made a concession when the legislation was in its final stages.
This limited the maximum increase under the Act at 18 months, at a cost to the Exchequer of £1.1 bn.
However, some women born in the 1950s argue they have been hit particularly hard, with significant changes to their SPA imposed with a lack of appropriate notification.
The campaign Women Against State Pension Inequality (WASPI) is calling for “fair transitional state pension arrangements,” which they say translates into a ‘bridging pension’ paid from age 60 to SPA.
The women’s petition calls for a non-means tested bridging pension for women born on or after 6/4/1950 who are affected by the 1995 and 2011 Pension Acts.
They want compensation for those at risk of losing up to around £45,000 and to be given proper notification for any future changes.
In a March 2015, a report on Communication of State Pension age changes, the Work and Pensions Select Committee concluded that “more could and should have been done” to communicate the changes and called on the Government to “explore the option of permitting a defined group of women who have been affected by state pension age changes to take early retirement, from a specified age, on an “actuarially neutral basis”.
The issue has been debated in Parliament on a number of occasions and an all Party Parliamentary Group on State Pension Inequality for Women has been set up to “hold the government to account on the issue of transitional arrangements to compensate 1950s women who are affected by changes to the state pension age and to campaign on issues around the state pension age.”
West Dunbartonshire ladies meet the wife of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn (centre).