The high court has ruled that women are not entitled to compensation for state pension age changes

Almost 4 million women born in the 1950s will not be compensated for the money they lost when the pension age was raised from 60 to 66, the high court has decided. Campaigners from the group BackTo60, which bought the claim on behalf of women affected by the pension changes, said they would appeal against the decision.

They argued the changes were discriminating against women, but judges disagreed and said:

“There was no direct discrimination on grounds of age or sex, and age and sex combined. Because this legislation does not treat women less favourably than men in law, rather it equalises a historic asymmetry between men and women and thereby corrects historic direct discrimination against men.”

The claimants also argued that they had not had sufficient notice of the changes and that this was contrary to the requirements of public law. This was rejected by the judges.

The leader of the campaign Joanne Welch said “They can’t knock us back. We’ve got a fierce and powerful armoury behind us. As well as the 3.8 million women affected, we have the support of 215 MPs, Unite, Unison, TUC and others”.

What was the case about?

Women in their 50s and 60s were hit by the government’s decision under the 1995 Pensions Act, to increase the female state pension age from 60 to 65. The change was to be phased in between 2010 and 2020.

The coalition government of 2010 accelerated the timetable and the 2011 Pensions Act brought the new qualifying age of 65 for women forward to 2018. The qualifying age for both men and women will be raised to 66 by October 2020.

The campaign group BackTo60 argued that women were not given time to adjust to the new retirement age and also that the changes in 2011 and 1995 had not been clearly communicated.