Further pensions help ruled out

Labour has failed to force UK ministers to go further in helping thousands of women who will lose out from the raising of the state pension age to 66 in 2020.

Ministers have already come up with a compromise, delaying the move by six months to October of that year, at a cost of £1.1 billion.

But in a Lords debate on the Pensions Bill yesterday, the Opposition said the concession did not go far enough.

They pushed an amendment aimed at helping those women who will lose out by having to wait longer for their pension. But this was defeated by 235 votes to 183, after work and pensions minister Lord Freud warned it would cost an extra £11bn, which was not affordable in the current economic climate.

The original plan to raise the pension age for both men and women to 66 by April 2020 sparked a furious reaction, especially from women’s groups.

An estimated 2.6 million would have had to wait longer than they were expecting, at relatively short notice, for their state pension.

Of these, about half a million would have had to wait more than a year and some 33,000, currently aged 57, would have had to wait two years.

The government’s concession, announced last month, will effectively cut the maximum amount of additional time anyone has to wait for their pension, from two years to 18 months.

Lord Freud admitted the original timetable had been “too harsh”, but insisted Labour’s plans would cost too much.

Baroness Greengross, a cross-bencher, who had previously pushed the government for concessions, said ministers had not gone as far as she and other campaigners would have liked.

But she welcomed their change to the bill as a “victory for common sense”.

After Labour’s amendment was rejected, the government’s own concession was backed without a vote. The bill now awaits Royal Assent.