RAISING the state pension age has had a ‘devastating’ impact on women born in the 1950s.

That is the view of Runcorn MP Mike Amesbury who was speaking before a committee of MPs.

The Weaver Vale MP and shadow minister for employment was speaking during the debate in Westminster Hall.

The decision to accelerate the rise in women’s state pension age in 2011 impacted 3.8 million people nationally and 4,000 in Weaver Vale.

He told the debate: “It is clear that the decision to accelerate the rise in women’s state pension age has had a devastating impact on many women who were born in the 1950s.

"Many are now facing hardship and poverty as a result, as was recently highlighted in the UN report.

“Some 3.8 million women affected did not have 'fair notification' of the changes. Those are the words not only of those 3.8 million women nationally or the 4,000 women affected in my constituency, but of the former pensions minister, Steve Webb.

"Those women certainly deserve recognition for this injustice, and fair transitional protections.”

He added: “Yesterday we recognised 100 years since the Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act 1918, which allowed women to stand and vote in Parliament, a key milestone in a long campaign for women’s equality and suffrage.

"At the heart of that campaign for equality was a rallying cry to action, 'Deeds not Words'.

"One hundred years on, our 1950s women need deeds, not words, and it is up to the minister and the government to deliver them.”