Hands up who’s seen this important piece of news on social media in recent weeks:
Actually, it’s a variation on an earlier story from 2018 when a petition called REVERSE CHANGES TO STATE PENSION AGE BACK TO 65 FOR MEN AND 60 TO WOMEN was circulated online. It went like this:
I started paying into the N.I. system aged 16 when the retirement age was stated as 65 for men and 60 for women. I’ve been full time employed since then and have had the terms of the state pension age changed without consultation. Stand up and stop this now. Look at the gov.uk website for the state pension change and what it means to you. You can get a personal projection so you can see how this new scheme will affect you personally.
The petition achieved an impressive 14,714 signatures, with only 64.4 million people failing to sign it. Despite this valiant effort, the Conservative government responded with this:
‘With Government facing increasing financial pressures, it is simply not justified to reverse the policy on State Pension age equalisation. We will be making no further changes to the law on this issue. Doing so would mean working-age people, especially younger people, bearing a greater financial burden to support the rising costs of the pensions system.’
Now we learn that the ‘Back to 65 Movement’ has been resurrected and has won the right to a Judicial Review and is taking the DWP to the High Court on 5th and 6th June and that Michael Mansfield QC “will lead the case and the argument for the movement.” I wonder if this is the same Michael Mansfield, who would be a KC these days, is the one who represented the Back to 60 campaign on 5th and 6th June 2019, opposing changes to the state pension age? Enough of the pretending: of course it is the same Michael Mansfield.
At the age of 84, Mansfield is not leading the campaign at a Judicial Review on 5th and 6th June (the version currently doing the rounds does not give a year but we assume it’s meant to be in 2026) because it actually happened seven years ago and this was the result:
‘In October 2019, the High Court ruled in favour of the government, stating the policy was not discriminatory and that the legislation didn’t treat women less favourably than men, but rather corrected historic imbalance.’
This is why there is no media coverage, which has been wrongly interpreted by the social media post as being a media blackout. It is nothing more than wishful thinking.
I was lucky. While I lost just one year of my state pension, my partner stands to lose seven. In any event, I was fortunate to escape the world of full-time work nine years ahead of my own state pension age and it barely affected my life. I appreciate that for many younger older folk, if you get my drift, the raising of the pension age is A Bad Thing. People are living longer these days, but not all of us. Who knows when our number will be up? If my retirement age had been lowered to 50 or even 40, I’d have been over the moon. I doubt that the younger generation, including my own children, would have been thrilled by the prospect of working longer for less, as well as paying extra tax in order to pay for today’s old folks’ pensions (fact: there is no pension pot hidden away at the Treasury).
Doubtless, some of the people who shared what is essentially old news, and dare I say it a hoax, may be disappointed to learn that their pension age is not going to be reduced anytime soon (or ever, actually) and that in truth the only way is up. But I am disappointed that so many people share things that are not true and do not stand up to even the most basic scrutiny.
Perhaps it is because I am a bit of news anorak but I well remember the petition, which I didn’t bother to sign because it was obviously a waste of time, the court case on 5th and 6th June 2019 and the outcome in October of the same year. I can be as susceptible to scams as the next woman and man – a couple of years ago I found myself locked out of a social media account because I fell for a simple scam – and I can see the appeal of earlier retirement for people who want to escape the rat race as soon as possible. But I was not inclined to “share the hell” of something which was clearly and obviously false.
And surely the old adage applies that if something appears to be too good to be true, it usually is. If you still believe Michael Mansfield will be leading the case and arguing for the back to 60/65 movement on 5th and 6th June 2026 – a Friday and Saturday, by the way – then prepared to be disappointed. The new blackout will be very real because there will be nothing to report. Maybe if 14 million people had signed the petition instead of 14,000, the government might have been more prepared to listen? I doubt it, though.
