WASPI Campaign

Are you one of the 5,400 women born in the 1950s living in the Llanelli constituency denied your pension rights? I’m pleased to see that women have come together locally to campaign for justice.

I’ve been supporting the Llanelli branch of the Women Against State Pension Injustice (WASPI) campaign and many other activists across Wales. These women weren’t properly informed that the Westminster Government was going to change their pension age.

Changes were made that equalised the pension age of men and women. The Pensions Act 1995 provided for the State Pension age for women to increase from 60 to 65 over the period April 2010 to 2020.The coalition Westminster Government of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats accelerated the increase to 66 by passing the Pensions Act in 2011.

Despite paying full National Insurance Contributions all their working lives, these women have been told at the last minute that the pensions they had expected at age 60 would be delayed by up to six years. International observers like the United Nations Special Rapporteur on poverty Philip Alston commented on the impact of the changes to the pension age on a group of women born in the 1950s who had been “ill-prepared” to adjust. He described the changes as having ‘severely and unconscionably penalised those who were on the cusp of retirement.’ This without doubt the nastiest and grubbiest of all the welfare cuts.

In the face of this injustice, a powerful campaign has begun to right this wrong, with a number of groups with different approaches. All have achieved a position where this injustice cannot be ignored. Plaid Cymru led councils and councillors have supported the campaigners. Our MPs have played an instrumental role in campaigning for fair pensions for women. In the Senedd in March this year Assembly Members backed the Plaid Cymru Group motion that recognised the campaign and called on the UK Government to make fair transitional state pension arrangements for all women affected by the change.

The Plaid Cymru motion also called on the Welsh Government to make representations to the UK Government in light of the substantial loss to the Welsh economy as a result of these changes.This fiasco has caused retirement plans to be shattered. Women who have planned and saved for their retirement are living on dwindling limited savings until they reach their new State Pension Age when the only income they will have left will be their State Pension.

The con-sequences of this poor implementation and communication are likely to be poverty, loss of independence and financial security, or ill health. Women in Wales have been particularly hit hard by the Westminster Government’s failures. Income per capita is lower than it is in other parts of the UK, and, on top of that, women in Wales earn less, on average, than men in Wales.We know that we need to introduce equality in terms of the state pension age, but we need to do that over a longer time frame and give an opportunity to women to prepare properly for their future and in a way that doesn’t leave them in poverty and distress.

Plaid Cymru is calling on the West-minster Government to make fair transitional state pension arrangements for all women born in the 1950s, who have unfairly borne the burden of the increase in the State Pension Age. The Welsh Government should also make a powerful case to Ministers in London in support of the Women Against State Pension Injustice campaign.In the future what we really need is for decisions about pensions, as well as benefits, to be made here in Wales by a government we elect.It is unimaginable that any government that the people of Wales would elect would have treated this group of women, after a lifetime of contribution, with such cruelty and contempt.

Follow me on twitter: https://twitter.com/helenmarycymru

Or like my page: www.facebook.com/HelenMaryJonesPlaid

If you wish to contact me about this or any other issues, email: HelenMary.Jones@assembly.wales