Retirement Age Parliamentary Debate 7 January 2016

On 7 January 2016 the retirement age for women born in the 1950s will be debated in Parliament in a initiative led by SNP MP Mhairi Black.

Due to changes bought in by both the Pensions Act 1995 and the Pensions Act 2011, many women have suffered an increase to their state pension age not once, but twice, with women arguing that the second increase was only giving them a short amount of notice to be able to change their retirement plans.

Many women who are due to retire in the next few years are now struggling to come to terms with the increased retirement ages and how they are going to fund them. The point of the debate is that these women were not given enough notice of the changes and the implementation of these changes should be reconsidered in terms of the swiftness of state pension age equalisation.

There is no doubt in most people’s minds that pension ages need to be equalised but the second change of age for women born in the 50s to having to retire at age 66, was accelerated by the Pensions Act 2011.

Although there is an online petition in place that has garnered tens of thousands of signatures after a group was set up to challenge the changes, the debate on 7th January is separate to this in that it was requested by Ms Black to the Backbench Business Committee which can agree on debates requested by MPs that is thinks are in the interest of the people.

We will be eagerly watching the debate and any outcome that results from it and will keep you notified of those on our website. Whether or not it will be possible to backtrack on the changes is a difficult question but perhaps there is the possibility of some transitional arrangements being put into place for those who are worst affected.