Public meeting called for Swansea women seeking pension justice

A public meeting has been called in Swansea to discuss pension injustice for 1950’s women.

Plaid Cymru’s Sioned Williams and local campaign group Pension Justice for Swansea Women, have called the meeting for women who missed out on their state pension at the age they were expecting it.

In 1995, Westminster took the decision to increase women’s state pension age from the age of 60, which particularly impacted women born in the 1950’s.

A significant number of women were given as little as one year’s notice of up to a 6 year increase to their State Pension Age.

An estimated 15,000 women are believed to have been impacted in the Swansea region.

The public meeting will provide an update on progress on the fight for financial redress for the loss of the State Pension for the women that were promised it at the age of 60.

It will be held at 6pm on Thursday 25 April at Swansea Guildhall.

Goalposts

The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) has been investigating the matter for several years.

The Ombudsman found that thousands of women across the UK may have been affected by DWP’s failure to adequately inform them that the State Pension age had changed.

Downing Street says it’s taking time to consider the report.

Janet Fisk from Pension Justice for Swansea Women, had to wait 2 years and ten months before she was able to draw her state pension.

She said: “I am fighting for those women not as fortunate as I. Women who continue to have to work in often labour intensive jobs such as cleaning, caring or stacking shelves in supermarkets way beyond the age any of us expected to be needing to do so.

“Women who have had to sell their homes because they can no longer afford to maintain them, women who are sleeping in their cars or sofa surfing until the council can rehouse them.

“None of this should be the burden of women in their 60s who paid into a National Insurance scheme to look after them from cradle to grave.”

Sioned Williams MS, Plaid Cymru Member of Senedd for South Wales West, said: “It seems incomprehensible that people could be in the situation where they’ve accepted redundancy from work, thinking their state pension was about to kick in, only to find the goalposts had been moved.

“Yet this is the situation millions of women found themselves in following Westminster’s decision in 1995.

“I support the calls on the Westminster Government to agree fair and fast compensation for all women affected by the lack of notice regarding the State Pension age increases to reflect their financial losses and the sustained damage to their mental health and well-being, and I urge Welsh Government to make those representations to the UK Government.

“This is an issue which directly discriminates against women and as Plaid Cymru’s spokesperson on Equalities, I feel this campaign for justice is of the utmost importance and I hope this meeting will raise awareness and support for it.”