DAVID CAMERON sparked anger last night after claiming women suddenly forced to wait up to two years longer for their state pension will be better off overall.
About 32,000 women across the North-East and Yorkshire – those currently aged 56 and 57 – have had their retirement plans wrecked by the hike in their pension age to 66 by 2020.
Of those, 4,000 born between March 6 and April 5, 1954, will have to work a full two years longer than they expected – losing up to £15,000 during that period, protestors have warned.
The Prime Minister is under growing pressure to think again, before the Pensions Bill returns to the Commons in the next few weeks. Seventeen Liberal Democrats are among 161 MPs who have signed a parliamentary motion.
But, yesterday, questioned in the chamber, Mr Cameron defended the policy, arguing that 85 per cent of the women affected would “lose one year or less in terms of their pension”.
And he went further – claiming, for the first time, that the shake-up was part of a package that would make pensioners better off, by re-linking their payments with earnings, rather than prices.
Mr Cameron told MPs: “It is right to lift the pension age for men and women to a higher level more rapidly than the last government decided.
“There is this difficulty that those two things – the equalisation of the pension age and the raising of the pension age – are coming together.
“But that is enabling us to link the pension with earnings, thus meaning that people will be £15,000 better off than they were under Labour’s plans.”
The £15,000 figure covers their retirement.
The claim was immediately dismissed as “rubbish” by Labour MP Rachel Reeves, who recently handed in a 10,000-signature petition at No.10, demanding a rethink.
Ms Reeves said the re-linking to earnings was to be funded by equalising the pension age at 66 for men and women in 2026 – not by fast-tracking the hike for women to 2020.
She added: “Women affected will not receive any of that extra money for up to two years when they are not receiving the state pension.”
Critics have warned that women already have lower pensions because they have been paid less, taken career breaks to care and many were prevented from saving into private pensions when working part-time.
Across the country, 33,000 women who will have to wait exactly two years longer for their pension – with just five years to plan.
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