Mariana Robinson, (62) an artist from the Wye Valley managed to get her unique proposal for bridging the gap that changes to women’s pensions have caused to the Pensions All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) in July this year. Her “63 is the new 60” proposal offers to meet the Government half way by allowing women born in the 1950s to retire at age 63 instead of the new timetable which was brought in by the 2011 Act.

Mariana has set up her own Facebook campaign to lobby Government to look at this much fairer proposal. She is concerned that with the Autumn Statement due this week, the Government has yet to acknowledge that these women have been treated unfairly. She said that there have been too many pensions’ acts changes hitting this one cohort of women at once.

She told the Ross Gazette that she, and her fellow campaigners, are not against womens’ retirement ages being brought into line with men but it should be done more fairly for those women who it will affect.

Mariana claims that there are huge anomalies between the age women can retire although there may be just a few months difference in ages. She proposes that women born between April 6th, 1953 up to April 5th, 1960 should be allowed their full state pension at age 63. She says that the 63rd birthday is a fairer point than the government time-tables. For more than 60 years, women have retired on their 60th birthday. However the first that the majority of women knew that they were being brought into line with men retiring at age 65, was within 18 months of their expected retirement at 60. Mariana said “This dreadful lack of communication meant it was far too late for them to make alternative retirement arrangements. Some had taken redundancy or decided to retire early to look after elderly parents, expecting their pensions within a couple of years, only to find that the goalposts had been moved not once, but sometimes twice or three times. That’s why these women have risen up and are fighting for justice.”

If you are a 1950s born woman and wish to support Mariana’s campaign you can find it on Facebook at www.facebook.com/groups/marianarobinson/