Women take state pension battle to High Court

A group claiming to represent almost 4m British women born in the 1950s has begun a court battle to try to prove that the government discriminated against them by raising their state pension age by as much as six years. Michael Mansfield QC, representing two unnamed members of BackTo60, told a judicial review against the Department for Work and Pensions at the High Court in London that the raised state pension age for women had been a “blight” on those born in the 1950s who had already suffered workplace discrimination and pay inequality. He said 3.8m women were in the same position as that of his clients. Women’s state pension age has been raised gradually from 60 since 2010, and they now receive the benefit at 65, in line with men. The entitlement age for both will rise to 66 from next year. The government has said the changes were designed to equalise the state pension entitlements between men and women. Mr Mansfield said that “in fact what has happened is the reverse”. BackTo60 argues that because the pay for British women born in the 1950s was often lower than that for men, and because many of these women took time out of the workplace to care for children, not receiving their state pension at 60 has had a disproportionately harsh effect on them. “They were encouraged to stay at home . . . the employer would tell them ‘if you get married, leave’,” said Mr Mansfield. This restricted the women’s ability to save into occupational retirement schemes and made them more reliant on the state payout. The lawyer said the flipside of such “historical factors and social expectations” was women being allowed to claim their state pensions earlier than men. Raising the age at which they could claim the pension meant the government had taken away “a far bigger proportion of their income than it [would be] for men”, he said. But James Eadie QC, representing the DWP, said the changes had equalised the state pension age between men and women to ensure “intergenerational fairness” between pensioners and the younger taxpayers funding them. He said the raising of women’s pension age had also occurred “to control government expenditure at a time of great pressure on public finances”, following the global financial crisis. Mr Mansfield argued that if the aim was to reduce government spending, the cost of such savings should not be “on the shoulders” of what he called the “bridgehead” generation of women born in the 1950s, but “borne in a non-discriminatory way” between all generations. Sir James said the government had taken “extensive steps” to notify affected women of changes to their state pension age that would help them plan for their retirement.

BackTo60 and Women Against State Pension Inequality, a related campaign group, have long argued that women born in the 1950s were not given adequate notice. WASPI claims many did not receive a personalised communication about their raised state pension age until between 2009 and 2013, when it was too late for them to save enough money to make up for the lost retirement income. Speaking outside the court, Jean Getty, a 64-year-old Northern Irish health sector worker, said that because she will retire at 66 instead of 60, the age increase would cost her more than £40,000, based on average state pension payments to women. “The government have said they wrote to us 15 years ago to tell us our state pension age would be moved to 65 or 66, which they didn’t do, which was maladministration,” she said. Ms Getty added she had expected to start receiving her state pension at 60 and had looked forward to “giving up my work, working on and receiving that money into my bank, or reducing my hours.” “But they didn’t give us enough notice so we did not plan for it.”