Why raising women’s state pension age is controversial

The state pension age for women in the UK has risen to 65 from today to align with that for men for the first time ever.

The move to equalise male and female pension ages “began 25 years ago, under John Major’s government, and has been gradually phased in”, says the BBC.

But campaigners say that women are still a long way from pension equality, since the amount they receive is lower, on average, while many have also been caught out by the shifting timetables.

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How has the pension age changed for women?

For more than six decades, women in the UK qualified to get their state pension at the age of 60. However, in 1995 lawmakers agreed to increase this age threshold to 65 between 2010 and 2020, to bring it into line with that for men.

In 2011, the then coalition government decided to speed up the process and to increase the state pension age for both sexes to 66 by October 2020.

This is to be followed by a further increase to 67 starting from 2026, says The Guardian.

Theresa May’s government has also accepted the findings of the Cridland review, which recommended that the pension age should rise still further - to 68 - by 2039. Hers is the latest in a long line of governments that have “accepted that unless the qualifying age went up, the state pension would become unaffordable”, says the BBC.

Why is the move controversial?

The decision in 2011 to speed up the process caught out many women, leaving them with no time to make alternative plans. “While women born in April 1953 would retire at 63 and 3 months, those born just six months later in November 1953 would have to wait until age 65,” says the i newspaper.

Although the nation’s leaders have insisted the move is about women’s pension equality, “some campaigners say the legislation fails to take into account what the change in pension age has meant for women born in the 1940s and 1950s”, adds the newspaper.

Groups such as Women Against State Pension Age Inequality (WASPI) have also campaigned for women to be compensated for the late notice given about the changes both in 1995 and 2011. Campaigners argue that some women did not have long enough to adjust their retirement plans after learning that they would receive their pension at the age of 65, rather than 60.

The state pension age for older women has increased by up to 18 months with only five years’ notice, while men had seven years’ notice of a 12-month change, says Ros Altmann, a pensions minister under David Cameron and Theresa May.

“The state pension age may be equalising but there is no pensions equality for women,” Altmann told The Guardian, adding that the late changes “have caused significant hardship”.

The issue is exacerbated by the lower wages and broken employment periods that may result in women failing to build a full national insurance record. This “means on average they receive lower state pensions than men”, says the newspaper.

In 2017, the average woman’s state pension was worth £126 a week, compared with the average man’s at £154, reports the BBC. Campaigners say that some women have lost out on as much as £45,000 because of the deficit in National Insurance contributions.

“Equalisation is not just about the age you reach retirement, but also your ability to generate a full state pension entitlement, and pay into a private pension, to have any hope of security in retirement,” said WASPI spokesperson Debbie de Spon.