WOMEN from Leigh have taken their fight for the state pension age to be lowered to Westminster.

They have been the country's strongest petitioners for the national Women Against State Pension Injustice (WASPI) campaign, with 1,030 votes coming from the Leigh community – more than twice as many as any other area in the UK.

The campaign against a significant rise in the state pension age (SPA) for women, which means those born in the 1950s will have to work six more years before receiving their pension, was discussed in Parliament last week.

And Leigh's WASPI campaigners were there to support MPs backing the campaign and to hear what was said.

One of them, Pat Morgan, 60, from Pennington, said: “The number of MPs that supported the petition was great.

"There were so many in there that there was no room at all and people were pushing to try to get in.”

For decades the SPA for women was 60. An increase to 65, phased in between 2010 and 2020, was included in the Pensions Act 1995, but in 2011 the coalition government pushed through a speeding up of the latter part of the timetable.

The SPA for women will instead increase to 65 between April 2016 and November 2018.

On top of that it was announced that the SPA for both men and women would rise to 66 by October 2020.

As a result several hundred thousand women born in the 1950s, most of whom were completely unaware of the significant SPA changes, have had their retirement plans destroyed, with those who were expecting to be able to claim their pension at the age of 60 now having to work six more years or face financial hardship.

Pat said: “The main thing is that most of us have worked from the age of 15, only to be told when we are expecting to retire that we can’t because we have to work for another six years or live off our savings.

“They said it will take £30 billion to make this right for all the women this has affected in the country. It’s a humanitarian issue.”

The WASPI campaign has had support from MP for Leigh Andy Burnham and many other MPs in Parliament.

The final vote on whether the SPA will be lowered should take place in April – and the women from Leigh are not prepared to take no for answer.

“If the vote doesn’t go our way then we will have to take it to the European Court,” said Pat.

The petition has been signed by more than 148,000 people from across the country.

You can sign the petition by clicking here or follow the cause on Facebook by searching for 'WASPI – Women Against State Pension Inequality Campaign'.