Should the state pension age be raised to 75?

I WONDER how Iain Duncan Smith would feel if he was told his parliamentary pension would not be paid until he was too old to enjoy it. I spent my working life doing taxing, hard toil before I retired at 65. It’s easy to sit in an office in Westminster dreaming up ways to deprive hard-working people of their retirement. IAN NEILL, Reigate, Surrey. IN THE past, men started work at 15 or 16, worked until 65 and then, failing health hit them in their late 60s or early 70s. State pension needed to be paid out for only a few years. Now, people start work later and live into their 70s, 80s or beyond. The state pension is being paid for by fewer taxpaying years. It needs to be paid out later so figures balance — a sad consequence of longer life expectancy.

ADEYEMI BANJO, London SE15. OLDER workers who are forced to work longer should be rewarded with an enhanced pension. All that is needed for the full pension is 35 years of credits. Is it fair to get nothing for working 15 extra years? DAVID BROWN, Stonesfield, Oxon. WHEN my husband Paul and I married in 1981, we expected he would claim his state pension at 65 followed by me at 60, six years later.

In the Nineties, it was announced that the retirement age for women would be equalised at 65 and since then my pension age has risen twice, to 66 and now 67. If it is raised to 75, my husband will be 82 by the time I retire. How will I cope with a commute to the office from a care home?

ALISON SPANKIE, Sudbury, Suffolk. AS A motor mechanic, at the age of 63 I couldn’t face another winter in a cold workshop, so I retired. Retiring at 75 might be possible for those in a cosy office job. PETE WILLIAMS, Hayes, Middlesex.