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The Government will press ahead with its timetable to raise the state pension age for women despite the threat of a revolt by Conservative and Liberal Democrat backbenchers.
Ministers are being urged to rethink plans to speed up the equalisation of the pension age for women and men because hundreds of thousands of women will be left with insufficient time to plan for their retirement.
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has insisted that the changes would go ahead as planned, as any delay would cost the taxpayer £10 billion.
Under the Pensions Bill, which receives its Commons second reading tomorrow, the state pension age for women will go up from 60 to 65 in 2018 – two years earlier than planned under Labour – rising to 66 in 2020.
However, there is cross-party opposition, with MPs warning that it discriminates unfairly against women in their late fifties who will now have to wait longer than they had expected to receive their pensions.
Lorely Burt, the chair of the Lib Dem parliamentary party, said up to 500,000 women will be hit as they “won’t have time to plan their retirement and will be financially worse off”.
Ros Altmann, the director general of Saga and a former government adviser on pensions, warned that ministers could face a costly legal challenge if they did not change course.
“Ministers must listen to reason on this issue. The current plans are unfair and may, indeed, be illegal in public law terms, since they clearly do not give women adequate notice of the large changes in pension age that they face,” she said.
“A legal challenge to the fairness of these proposals is likely to be difficult for Government to defend and could end up costing the taxpayer significant sums in court fees and compensation for those affected.”
Senior Tory backbencher Sir Peter Bottomley predicted that the Government would have to back down and accept that the changes were unfair.
“It is right to raise the pension age, it is wrong to do it for a particular group so dramatically and at such short notice.”
However, the DWP said that ministers intended to push through the Bill as planned.
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Chris Collins
Business Development
Barbara
I would like to know if there is to be a legal challenge to the Governments pension plans particularly as I am in the worst group – 1954.
Having faced one increase and now have another 2 yrs imposed when I would be retiring in 3yrs is totally unjustified and only affects a small group of women.
Ian Duncan Smith seems to have gone particularly quiet now that the bill has received a 2nd reading and a small amount of women do not carry the force of the unions I dare say.
We need to get as much publicity from newspapers and the media with the full support of Age UK and Saga so that the conservatives do not sweep this issue under the carpet.
It’s difficult for women in full time employment to have to delay their plans for sure. It’s absolutely impossible for those of us who have had to retire early to care for elderly parents.
I couldn’t bear the thought of my father wasting away in a care home after a severe stroke so I sacrificed a well paid career to care for him myself. It’s a 24/7 nursing job for which I have been turned down Carer’s allowance. Before I did this I managed to invest a small sum to pay me an annual amount to supplement my private pension until my State pension kicks in. Or so I thought…….Then the bank fiasco took 30% of that sum of money away overnight. It hasn’t recovered. Now what little I have left has to stretch further. I’m very careful but I’m not sure it will. i understand all the reasons why things have to change but I don’t know what the hell I can do about it now that I have no option and no time to earn amy more unless my father passes on. What kind of a choice is that when we’ve both worked all our lives and paid our contributions.