'Shattered retirement plans' to be debated in Parliament

MPs will this afternoon debate claims that retirement plans “have been shattered with devastating consequences” due to transitional state pension arrangements. A petition from Women Against State Pension Inequality has so far attracted nearly 140,000 names.But the Government is unlikely to budge on its stance despite what campaigners called the ‘unfair burden’ on for 1950s women, a pensions expert says.The petition, created by Celia Johnson, called on the Government to make “fair transitional arrangements for all women born on or after 6 April 1951 who have unfairly borne the burden of the increase to the State Pension Age”.She said: “Retirement plans have been shattered with devastating consequences. Hundreds of thousands of women have had significant changes imposed on them with a lack of appropriate notification.“Women Against State Pension Inequality, agree with equalisation, but don’t agree with the unfair way the changes were implemented.”Tom McPhail, head of retirement policy at Hargreaves Lansdown, said: “The campaigners have built up a considerable head of steam and have widespread support; the challenge will be to make the case that there are individual groups of women who do indeed have legitimate grounds for a transitional arrangement and also, specifically how it could be paid for.”Mr McPhail said: “The Government appears determined to stick to its guns. The cost of any government concession could very quickly run into billions of pounds so it is hard to see how the government could give any ground without some off-setting measure elsewhere, such as raising further the retirement age for subsequent generations.”He highlighted the last debate in the House of Commons on 7 January, where he said the Government “showed little interest in actively engaging in the debate at all, with the motion being won 158-0”.The official Government response to the petition stated that it would not be revisiting the State Pension age arrangements for women affected by the 1995 or 2011 Acts.State pension age changes were first made in 1995 and all women affected have been directly contacted following the changes, the Government said.The policy decision to increase women’s State Pension age was designed to remove the inequality between men and women, the Government said. The cost of prolonging this would be several billions of pounds, it said.Officials from the DWP said that Parliament had “extensively debated the issue” and listened to all arguments both for and against the acceleration of the timetable to remove the inequality.The decision was approved by Parliament in 2011 and there was “no new evidence to consider”, the Government said.

'Shattered retirement plans' to be debated in Parliament

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