Hilary Simpson was happy in 2009, when she was 55, to take early retirement from her job in local government. She wanted to help her daughter get on in her career by taking on childcare responsibilities of her granddaughter. And, after 30 years of hard work, she wanted to relax.
“It was an attractive offer we were given,” she says. “A lump sum and then a reduced pension. I assumed – because I had no evidence to the contrary – that I’d be getting my pension at 60. I drew up a spreadsheet for how to make the lump sum last five years, then signed on the dotted line.”
It was only after she had taken retirement that Simpson discovered she had been affected by legislation, passed in 1995, that meant she would not get her state pension until she was 63. “There was no excuse for either my employers or the DWP not having told me. I worked next door to the HR department. I’d never moved house – the government had all my details.”
With no other choice, Simpson adapted the spreadsheet. “I made the lump sum last eight years instead of five,” she says. But then, in 2011, the pension changes were accelerated and she was informed (“At least I was told this time!” she adds) that her pension age had increased again to 65 and a half.
“So the lump sum that looked perfectly reasonable for five years now had to stretch over 10 and a half years,” she says. “I was suddenly having to penny pinch at an age when I thought I would be able to relax. I’d never been hard-up before but now I had to think twice before even buying a book, clothes or a meal out.
“I tried to get another job but who’s going to employ a woman in her late 50s? Added to that, my daughter had made all sorts of career choices based on my promise that I’d help with childcare. I couldn’t back out of that.”
As well as the financial impact, Simpson talks of the psychological consequences. “Instead of my retirement being the period of calm enjoyment I’d worked towards for all these years, I was plunged into huge anger, upset, distress. I felt like I’d been scammed: why hadn’t anyone told me my pension age had changed? Why hadn’t I known about it – was I stupid? I’m a very methodical person, how could this have slipped by me?
“I channelled all that anger into campaigning – it’s been a full-time job – but that’s not what I wanted my retirement to be about. It’s been demoralising,” she says. “It’s affected me deeply and is certainly not how I wanted to spend my retirement.”
She welcomes Thursday’s report from the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman which concluded the women were owed compensation, particularly its conclusion that they had not been confused and the fault was not theirs – “which is what we’ve been told and has been implied for so long”.
However, she would like a far higher level of compensation than the £1,000 to £2,950 a person payouts that the report recommends. “The damage wasn’t only financial: it was psychological and emotional, and what they’re offering isn’t nearly enough recompense for that,” she says.
“I’m going to continue campaigning for the full £10,000. I know it adds up to an awful lot of money but that’s only because so many of us women were affected. There are 3.5 million of us – but that’s not our fault.”
