No way to treat a woman: Waspi case study video exposes state pensions rip-off.

This video explains the adverse effects the State Pension Age (SPA) changes introduced by the 1995 and 2011 Pensions Acts are already having on 1950s-born women just three years into the ten year timetable.

As the former pensions minister Stephen Webb pointed out in 2014, pensions are not a benefit. You have paid for this right through National Insurance Contributions.
“Absolutely rightly, it is yours by right, you have paid your national insurance contributions. There’s a certain amount of stigma about claiming benefits, when people draw their state pension that’s not how they think of it.”

However, I disagree with the Waspi organisation’s conclusion that acceptance of the raised State Pension Age for women is the only way forward. Women earn only about 80 per cent of men’s income so any description of this SPA hike of 6 years with little notice as “equalisation” is brutally cynical. And how many jobs are there for women aged 60 to 66? Britain has one of the worst pension systems in the wealthier developed world and we should not accept a race to the bottom in the 4th/5th/6th richest economy on the planet, especially when there’s money for bank bailouts, wars and expensive vanity projects such as the proposed Garden Bridge over the river Thames, or HS2.

I trust that Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour Party and a significant swathe of cross-party MPs, will defend the most vulnerable in society and support the WASPI APPG. But bring back the 60 year SPA.

See also:

July 2018: The rape of the National Insurance Fund A draft prepared by Tony Lynes as a basis for a National Pensioners Convention factsheet on the National Insurance Fund

Waspi busts the myth of State Pension Age “equalisation”: Waspi fact file

WASPI women’s pensions were in surplus but RAIDED: restore our pensions

Osborne clobbers low paid freelancers and deals fresh blow to women born in the 1950s in Budget 2016

No way to treat a woman: Waspi case study video exposes state pensions rip-off.

Hansard on the Waspi debate in Parliament, 1st Feb 2016.

WASPI women are the first line of defence in the government’s war on state pensions — YOUR state pension.