Some means must be found to ease the hardship faced by the 1950s-born women worst affected by pension age changes. Last week the high court rejected the arguments in a judicial review brought by the campaign group BackTo60. The group argued that changes to the law in 1995 and 2011 were discriminatory on grounds of sex and age, and that 3.8 million women should be compensated. But while last Thursday’s loss was a setback, the campaign is far from over. An appeal is one possibility. Continuing pressure on politicians – including the prime minister, who pledged during his leadership campaign to take a fresh look at the sums – is a certainty.

The principle of pension age equalisation is not contested. Neither the BackTo60 group (despite its name) nor Women Against State Pension Inequality (Waspi) believes that changes to the law should be reversed so that women continue to receive state pensions at a younger age than men. Equalisation has been the work of several governments, with a crucial landmark passed last year when 65-year-old women became the first to qualify at the same age as men.

But 1950s-born women argue that the pace of change has been too rapid, penalising them as a cohort. In addition, the women and their supporters – who include the former Conservative pensions minister Ros Altmann – believe that not enough was done to inform them of the changes, either when they were brought in or since.

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