This radical reform will leave women who have taken career breaks usually to raise a family as the biggest 
winners as the Government press ahead to introduce a flat rate retirement payment worth £140 per week for everyone.
By ending means-testing for pension top-ups, ministers also hope to encourage people to save for their retirement, safe in the knowledge they will not lose out through their prudence.
The complicated patchwork of pension payments and means-tested top-ups – which experts say is the most complex in the world and the bureaucracy for which costs millions of pounds a year – would be replaced with a single, uniform state pension of about £7,280 a year.
It is not clear when the new pension would be introduced, though ministers want it in place before the next election in 2015. Coalition sources say it is vital that the reform is in place before the pension age for women is increased.
Under Labour the state pension age for women was due to rise from 60 to 65 between 2010 and 2020. But under the new legislation, women will retire at 65 by 2016 and then their pension age will rise to 66 over the following four years.
Some safeguards will be necessary to prevent abuse – for instance, by the long-term unemployed or immigrants who might be attracted by coming to Britain, working for a short period and then qualifying for the full pension.
It is likely that NI contributions will still be used to determine eligibility for the full state pension, though the current qualifying period, 30 years, could be reduced.
In a speech to the charity Age UK today, Mr Duncan Smith will argue the reform will stop younger workers becoming ‘increasingly cynical about saving’ for retirement, only to have it count against them when they are means-tested for top-up pension payments.
He will say: ‘The state pension system is so complex that most people have no idea what it will mean for them now and in their retirement.
‘And too many people on low incomes who do the right thing in saving for their retirement find those savings clawed back through means-testing .
Dr Ros Altmann, a former Treasury adviser who is now director general of Saga, said: ‘We absolutely have to reform the state pension… At the moment, it’s like building on quicksand.
‘Many women get much less than men. Even though there has been some reform, and women are credited under the National Insurance system for childcare years, they don’t get as much as if they were working.’
If the proposal to accelerate the rise in the pension age passes, the women being discriminated against by being targeted twice will miss out on even more of the rightful pension they have paid in all their lives for. Many started work at 15 years old when there was no equality of wages and no private pension schemes. They have paid in all their working lives, 15 -66 is 51 years of contributions but they would be robbed of up to 2 years of their state pension.
What is the point in making the pension equal for all when those who keep having their retirement goalposts moved are very unlikely to ever receive it !
How very kind of IDS to dangle a pension of £140 a week before us while conspiring to rob us of our pensions by putting back our retirement ages AGAIN by a FURTHER 2 years. What does he want blood? This wonderful new pension that he is offering is never going to be attainable because everytime we women approach retiring age he and his cronies move the bloody goalposts!
I know of at least 4 women who would be affected by the proposed age rise have commented.
We only want to know what is the point of promising a higher pension whilst robbing us of up to 2 more years of the pension we have paid into in good faith.Some of us will never reach state pension age !
Yes Dr Altmann says the pension must be reformed but she also says it’s unfair that the 500,000 women targeted twice by age rises would be robbed !!
Would someone retiring in July 2015 qualify for the rise?