Wednesday, January 20, 2021
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Careers
  • Contact
Pension Changes
  • Home
  • Government Policy
  • Pension Changes
  • Pension Information
  • Pension Rights
  • Retirement Pension
No Result
View All Result
Pension Changes
Home Pension Rights

This brutal judgment on pensions is blind to the reality of older women’s lives

March 16, 2020
in Pension Rights
0
SHARES
2
VIEWS
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

This brutal judgment on pensions is blind to the reality of older women’s lives

Equality for women is not always a victory. Women and men’s entitlement to a state pension was equalised by law back in 1995, so women retire at 65 now, at 66 next year – just the same as men. Sounds fair? Not to women born in the 1950s whose lives were hard work and slim savings, with no chance to build up pensions: they expected to retire at 60 and draw their state pension.

Related posts

Pension Solvency Relief Gets Fresh Shot in Democratic Congress

Pension Solvency Relief Gets Fresh Shot in Democratic Congress

January 19, 2021
EU Court to Consider if an Irish Pension can be Exempted from a UK Bankruptcy Estate

Mind the Divorce Gap – Lexology

January 18, 2021

BackTo60 took their case to court for compensation and today they lost. BackTo60 and Women Against State Pension Inequality (Waspi) are implacable campaigners for the pension rights of nearly 4 million women born in the 1950s. Waspi turn up at every political event and tail each Department for Work and Pensions secretary relentlessly to protest about pension changes that left many in penury. Politicians groan inwardly when they see them coming, but these women never give up.

Two campaigners, with the help of BackTo60 and crowdfunding, sought a judicial review but today were turned down. They don’t oppose an equal pension age: their complaint is the speed with which women’s pension age has been raised, to 65 last year, to 66 next year, giving many no chance to build up a pension. The law was changed in 1995 and was intended to be phased in between 2010 and 2020 – but in 2011, the coalition government speeded up the change, implementing it in 2018. Many women were only warned by letter 16 years after the initial legislation was passed.

This group are losing four to six years’ worth of state pension – life-changing individual sums of some £47,000, while the treasury saved £30bn.

The government’s case was bluntly put by Sir James Eadie QC: “Parliament has no substantive, freestanding obligation of fairness,” he told the court. There you have it, no duty to fairness and the court agreed, though claimed to be “saddened by the stories”. As we know, courts regard parliament as sovereign and parliament had passed it into law. Nor did it matter that the government had failed to warn the women: “There is precisely no obligation on parliament to notify those affected by its judgments,” Eadie said, and the court agreed.

Here’s what stands out: governments have been slow to pass laws and slower still to enforce equality for women in every other field. When the equal pay and sex discrimination acts were passed by Barbara Castle in the 1970s, we who had campaigned thought it was all done and dusted, job done. Yet the pay gap yawns wide, while women’s promotion to higher jobs lags behind and fair treatment in essential services that give women an equal chance are a matter of political whim – from childcare, which is the most expensive in Europe, to refuges for victims of domestic violence. The one and only equality for women imposed with a rod of iron was the equalisation of pension ages, because it saved the Treasury a fortune.

The court case was never against equalising the pension age – indeed, more women are in work and for longer. Since the abolition of the compulsory retirement age, the number of people continuing to work past the age of 65 has risen to 1.2 million. But introducing this “equality” at draconian speed was in effect a retrospective act. These older, poorer women’s lives were very different from younger women now. Many left school at 14 and 15 to work in hard manual jobs that took a toll on their health. Few had further education opportunities, and more of them are unskilled. They were paid less than men, and still are. In researching a book on work, I found trade union agreements in the car industry that demanded women be paid less, for fear they would take men’s jobs, hence the famous Dagenham women machinists’ strike. Part-timers, almost all women, were excluded from company pension schemes until 1989. Women back then had total responsibility as carers: there was no subsidised childcare nor nurseries until the Blair/Brown government.

Had they been clearly told, some could have planned working lives to last longer, though many couldn’t. Discrimination against older women applying for work is even worse than it is for older men. Michael Mansfield, representing the women, gave the court government documents proving ministers knew there was “widespread ignorance” among many women that they were about to lose their pensions. Informing people about pensions is notoriously difficult, hence the success of the recent automatic enrolment scheme requiring people to opt out – it relies on most people staying clueless.

Pensioners have been better off since Labour’s pension credit took a million out of poverty and the coalition government introduced a triple lock on state pensions, guaranteeing an increase of whichever is the highest – 2.5%, the inflation rate or the rise in average wages. Pensioners are now less likely to be poor than the rest of the population. But that’s not saying much, since almost 4.5 million children have fallen into poverty.

A recent Financial Conduct Authority report says the state pension is the main source of income in retirement for 44% of people. How can people save when that report finds 31% of adults with no private pension provision and nearly six in 10 (57%) with savings of less than £5,000 or no cash savings at all?

Those on high who make sweeping decisions about the lives of others screen out these brutal facts, as if they are beyond their comprehension. A large slice of the population they govern has nothing – no safeguards, no protection from even the smallest buffets in their lives. Poverty and living on the verge of poverty is widespread, and means a life of constant anxiety. Waspi describes how many of their number – unable to work until 66, and unable to draw a pension – are reduced to food banks to survive.

With his usual empty bravado, when asked on the leadership hustings if he would help the stranded women, Boris Johnson promised to “commit to doing everything I possibly can to sorting out” the issue if he became prime minister. Now Johnson is in No 10, how many of those hasty promises of everything to everyone will he fulfil?

• This article was amended on 4 October 2019 to clarify that the BackTo60 case is separate from a similar, still ongoing case brought by Waspi.

• Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

— This brutal judgment on pensions is blind to the reality of older women’s lives to www.theguardian.com

Previous Post

How to navigate protection and the lifetime allowance

Next Post

FG’s Pension Liabilities Hit N494.12bn

Next Post
FG’s Pension Liabilities Hit N494.12bn

FG’s Pension Liabilities Hit N494.12bn

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

RECOMMENDED NEWS

A view from Peru | Wicked Leeks

A view from Peru | Wicked Leeks

9 months ago
Ball Aerospace President Rob Strain Joins Defense Innovation Board’s Space Advisory Committee

Ball Aerospace President Rob Strain Joins Defense Innovation Board’s Space Advisory Committee

4 months ago
Dutch social partners call for ‘transition regime’ to new pensions contract | News

Dutch social partners call for ‘transition regime’ to new pensions contract | News

4 months ago

Market reaction has dented many pension pots

9 months ago

FOLLOW US

  • 79 Followers
  • 27.6k Followers
  • 40.7k Subscribers

BROWSE BY CATEGORIES

  • Government Pension Policy
  • Pension Changes
  • Pension Information
  • Pension Policy
  • Pension Rights
  • Retirement Pension
  • Uncategorized

BROWSE BY TOPICS

2021 2021 Pensions auto-enrolment age 18 auto enrolment pension contributions 2021/22 auto enrolment rates 2020/21 auto enrolment rates 2021/22 cashing in pension at 55 cashing in pension calculator cashing in small pension pots CCP retirement check my state pension Disabled pensions drawdown employer pension contributions 2021/22 government policy examples uk list of government policies uk minimum pension contributions 2021 minimum pension contributions 2022 new state pension Pension age pension issues pension ombudsman pension plan pension regulator Pensions Advisory Service Pensions Brexit pension scheme uk Pensions outlook retirement 2 million scams scheme funding Single mothers pensions State Pension State Pension age state pension changes state pension forecast State Pensions State triple lock taking pension at 55 the pensions regulator Therese Coffey uk pension age UK State Pension uk state pension age what is government policy uk

POPULAR NEWS

  • Multiemployer pension reform not happening this year

    Multiemployer pension reform not happening this year

    5 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Exit payment cap: Implications for the LGPS

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Public Service Pensions Update | October 2020

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • NEST: More than a pension | Country Report

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Builders were not self-employed, rules employment tribunal

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0

Follow us on social media:

Recent News

  • Pension Solvency Relief Gets Fresh Shot in Democratic Congress
  • Further Insight Into Deductibility Of Collateral Benefits – Employment and HR
  • Beijing House Church Pastor Denied Pension Amid Ongoing Crackdown on Worship — Radio Free Asia

Category

  • Government Pension Policy
  • Pension Changes
  • Pension Information
  • Pension Policy
  • Pension Rights
  • Retirement Pension
  • Uncategorized

Recent News

Pension Solvency Relief Gets Fresh Shot in Democratic Congress

Pension Solvency Relief Gets Fresh Shot in Democratic Congress

January 19, 2021

Further Insight Into Deductibility Of Collateral Benefits – Employment and HR

January 19, 2021
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Careers
  • Contact

© 2020 Please contact us on partnership@pensionchanges.co.uk if you would like to reach our audience.

No Result
View All Result
  • Home

© 2020 Please contact us on partnership@pensionchanges.co.uk if you would like to reach our audience.