State pension: crushed hopes for wronged retirees

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.

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".

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Natalie joined MoneyWeek in March 2015. Prior to that she worked as a reporter for The Lawyer, and a researcher/writer for legal careers publication the Chambers Student Guide. 

She has an undergraduate degree in Politics with Media from the University of East Anglia, and a Master’s degree in International Conflict Studies from King’s College, London.