A CHURCH Crookham resident is continuing the fight against the government and the way it has handled women’s pensions.

Yvonne Robinson is head of the north Hampshire WASPI group, with the nationwide organisation bringing their fight back to Parliament after a successful first demonstration last June.

Since then, the Women Against State Pension Inequality group have gone from strength to strength in their battle against the way the government has treated women born in the 1950s (on or after April 6, 1951) regarding the changes to their state pension age.

The 1995 Conservative Government’s Pension Act included plans to increase women’s State Pension Age to 65, the same as men’s. While the group agrees with equalisation, it does not agree with the way the changes were implemented, with little or no personal notice.

In the seven months since their first demo over £100,000 has been raised to fund their legal claim, with Bindmans solicitors now acting on the group’s behalf.

Many parish, borough, district and county councils have now offered their support to WASPI, while over 100 MPs handed petitions into parliament in October last year supporting their campaign.

Yvonne Robinson, who welcomes women from Hook, Fleet, Basingstoke, Farnham and Yateley to the group, said the next protest will be on Wednesday, March 8, in Westminster and is hopeful of an even larger turnout than last year: “We are hoping the numbers attending will exceed the 2,500 women who attended the last demo in June as WASPI now has over 140 groups across the UK and travel is already being booked from Scotland, Wales and the West Country.

“I have been in contact with my MP Ranil Jayawardena for a number of months along with another member of our local group.”

The surprise changes to the state pensions age has meant the Church Crookham resident has worked two years past her initially planned retirement age: “I should have been retired two years now, so they have two years of my pension, plus they have two years of national insurance which I have paid while continuing to work.

“When we met with MPs in Parliament in June they asked us why WASPI had left it so long to complain about the changes.  

“The answer to this is ‘because we didn’t know about it as the Government didn’t tell us’.”

In addition to the successful fundraising over the second half of last year the group has recently found out that Unison has pledged its support, which the group hopes will help enormously in spreading the word of their campaign.

Ahead of the demonstration in the early days of spring, Yvonne also told of how WASPI had handed in “the largest public petition presented to Parliament on any one day, in terms of both time it took to get presented, 25 minutes, and the number of constituencies represented, 206.”

Following meetings held with Jeremy Corbyn and Shadow Ministers, as well as key SNP MPs, the WASPI ladies hope their campaign hits new heights over the next few months.

For information about the campaign and upcoming demonstration in London, go to www.waspi.co.uk.