A woman has said the Government has “stolen” £45,000 from her after she only found out she would not be paid her state pension when she applied for a bus pass.
Carole Cooper, 68, is one of millions of women born in the 1950s who are furious about not being told in a timely way that they would be affected by the rising state pension age.
It comes after the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) took the “rare but necessary” decision to ask Parliament to intervene over complaints about how state pension changes were communicated.
Ms Cooper told the BBC she should have retired in 2015 and only found out she was not going to be paid her state pension when she applied for a bus pass and was told she wasn’t old enough.
She said the government has "stolen £45,000" from her, adding "I worked hard all my life and then I had to wait a whole six years with no income".
The South Cambridgeshire resident added that she had to spend £20,000 to re-train in healthcare to make some money until she turned 66.
She added that she is angry with the level of compensation suggested by the ombudsman of between £1,000 and £2,950.
"I don't want compensation, I want the money you have stolen from me," she says.
Another pensioner told the BBC she feels "really aggrieved that the government have changed the age as they went along".
Audrey Evans, 66, from Nottingham was 14 when she started working full-time in a sewing machine factory, before qualifying as a nurse.
She said having to postpone retirement had a "devastating impact" on her life as her husband is nine years older, so he was 74 before they could retire together.
"That's a massive gap in the quality of retired life together," she says. "The government basically robbed us of precious years together, a total injustice."
The possibility of compensation "would be some recognition that we were hardly done by," she says, but it "would have been better had we had a pension from 60".
Londoner Michele Carlile had to give up a senior role in education at the age of 59 after suffering a heart attack.
She said: "That has had a terrible effect. Right at the start I had no way of paying my mortgage, I had to go and stay with my son so that I could rent my property.
"Then, just as we were getting to grips with that, suddenly in 2011 the coalition [government] upped it for my age group by a considerable amount, another couple of years."
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride is likely to appear in the House of Commons before the Easter recess to address the ombudsman’s recommendations, Penny Mordaunt suggested.
Commons Leader Ms Mordaunt said her colleague “will want to come to the despatch box”.
The Department for Work and Pensions has said it will consider the ombudsman’s report and respond in due course.
