Showing posts with label Women's pensions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Women's pensions. Show all posts

Thursday, 13 October 2011

Amendment shows government has got women's pension age increase wrong


Responding to the government's amendment to the Pensions Bill to cap the increase in the state pension age for some groups of women, TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said:
"This concession means the government has now accepted that it got the increase in the state pension age for women wrong.
"But hundreds of thousands of women will still lose out and have every right to be angry.

"Putting up the state pension age doesn't create a single extra job for older workers, and the worst hit will be those women who can neither work nor claim a pension, and have to rely on our tough and mean benefits system."
Commenting on the amendment in the Pensions Bill to cap charges for deferred members of pension schemes, Brendan Barber said:
"We strongly welcome the amendment to give the government greater powers to cap charges for deferred members of pension schemes. This shows ministers have heeded the warnings of unions and consumer groups that this is a scandal waiting to happen.
"The industry may talk about active member discounts, but the correct term has always been deferred member penalties."

Friday, 20 May 2011

More broken promises – women and the State Pension Age - Touchstone blog by Scarlett Harris


Earlier this year Sarah Veale, Head of Equality and Employment Rights at the TUC, blogged on this site about the impact of changes to the State Pension Age on women.
Since then campaigns by Rachel Reeves MP, Age UK, Unions Together, and individual unions have all gathered momentum. Even some coalition partners have got in on the act with some Lib Dems expressing concern over the departure from the coalition agreement that these changes represent.
Just to recap, the Coalition Agreement said that the state pension age (SPA) would rise to 66 but this would “not be sooner than 2016 for men and 2020 for women.” Since then the Government performed a dramatic U-turn and published draft legislation to accelerate the equalisation for women by 2018, and then increase both men and women’s state pension ages to 66 by 2020. Women aged around 56 and 57 are set to lose the most from this shift in the goalposts, with very little time to prepare or amend existing plans.
Want to read more of this Touchstone article? Click on the link: http://www.touchstoneblog.org.uk/2011/05/more-broken-promises-women-and-the-state-pension-age/