Misleading claim about pension age continues to circulate online

27 August 2019
What was claimed

There is a Tory plan to raise the pension age to 75.

Our verdict

This policy was recommended in a report by the Centre for Social Justice think tank, which is chaired by Conservative MP Iain Duncan Smith. The Department for Work and Pensions told us it is not government policy to do this.

We previously fact checked a Daily Mirror article which incorrectly claimed that the government planned to raise the state pension age to 75 over the next 16 years.

The Mirror has corrected its article, but the claim continues to circulate on social media. One Facebook page shared a picture of the Sunday People’s front page, which said:

“WORK UNTIL YOU ARE 75:

Fury at Tory plan to raise pension age”.

It has been shared over 2,000 times.

Another post shared a screenshot of a tweet saying: “The Tory plot to raise the pension age to 75 means that a lot of people will never even see their pensions – which they will have paid for – because they will be dead.” It has been shared over 200 times.

It’s misleading to claim there is a Conservative plan to raise the pension age to 75, as we’ve already explained.

The Centre for Social Justice, which first proposed Universal Credit and is chaired by former work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith, did recommend that the State Pension Age be increased to 75 by 2035 in a new report.

But the Department for Work and Pensions told us that it’s not government policy to do this. It has since reiterated this publicly.

State pension age in the UK is currently a little over 65 for both men and women. By October 2020 it will have risen to 66, from 66 to 67 between the years 2026 and 2028, and then from 67 to 68 between 2044 and 2046.

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