The government has "no plans" to help women who stand to lose thousands of pounds because of increases to the state pension age, it announced last week. Millions of women born in the 1950s will lose out, due to a government decision made in 2011 to accelerate the phasing in of an increase in the women's state pension age from 60 to 66. Those affected by the 2011 changes will have to wait for a maximum extra 18 months (down from an original cap of two years) to claim their state pensions, but that still means that roughly 80,000 women will lose up to £8,000, while 48,000 will lose as much as £12,000, according to figures compiled by Labour MPs for the House of Commons Library.
Campaign group Women Against State Pension Inequality (Waspi) has lobbied for more favourable transitional arrangements, and the pensions minister, Ros Altmann, announced that she was examining ways to deal with the issue. But the new pensions secretary, Stephen Crabb, has crushed their hopes criticising MPs who "lead these women on" by making out there is an easy decision to be made, and stating that it's "fiscally impossible" to unwind the changes. Crabb said that he understood women who felt they were taken by surprise by the changes "most people breeze through life not thinking in any great depth about their pensions".
Yet any potential solution would cost the Treasury "billions", says Crabb. This would create a "fiscal burden" that would have to be shouldered by the young. And Waspi's proposed solution allowing women to take a lifelong reduced state pension before the age of 66, which it says would be "fiscally neutral" isn't actually what those affected want, says Crabb.
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The Pensions Regulator (TPR) has hit back against accusations that it doesn't have the "teeth" needed to regulate defined-benefit (DB) pensions, following the collapse of BHS, and the entry of the company's pension funds into the Pension Protection Fund. During an examination of BHS's demise, TPR boss Lesley Titcomb argued that the current regulatory framework is sufficient for "the vast majority" of pension funds, which are backed by a "strong, well-behaved responsible employer".
Planning to retire to Australia? Consider your pension options carefully. The Australian government has imposed an A$500,000 (roughly £250,000) lifetime cap on "non-concessional" pension contributions. It's aimed mainly at preventing well-off Australians from making hefty additional pension contributions for tax-planning purposes. But it will also catch out Britons who hope to transfer their pension funds after emigrating, and high-earning Australians living in the UK who intend to return home with a big pension pot. Those who break the new rules will face penalty charges of up to 45% on the excess.
Between changing jobs, moving house, and a general horror of paperwork, four in five of us will lose track of at least one pension pot during our lives, reckons the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). Its new Pension Tracing Service is designed to make it easier to hunt down these lost pots quickly. If you enter a former employer's details online, you'll be given the contact details for schemes that you may have paid into during your time with them. About £400m in unclaimed savings is waiting to be rediscovered, says the DWP.
