national insurance contributions

[sammmo]

under present law a male has to contribute 44 years contributions and a femail 39 years contributions to qualify for a full pension.. a femail work collegue of mine can retire @ 60 with a full pension, or carry on working till she's 65 whilst still claiming full pension, i'm not sure if she still has to pay N I contributions during this time..i'm 2 weeks older than her and at 55yrs i've already paid 40 yrs contributions ..i've 2 questions i hope someone can answer...1. after i've paid 49 years of contributions can i stop paying into the pot? and 2.. why in these days of equal rights can't i start claiming my pension at 60..? as it is my collegue will be able to claim 5 yrs extra pension for paying in less contributions.. has anyone ever taken this up with the court of human rights? I would love to retire at 60 on full pension..why can't i? don't say because your a bloke because thats sexist..

[buildersmate]

It�s an incredibly valid question, Sammo, but you need to address it to the Chancellor (who will do nothing about it).
A while back a UK gentlemen took the UK Government to the European Court over the discrepancy between retirement ages and won. But the man was an idiot if he believed the Government would just roll over. Changing the male retirement age to 60 was have been crippling for the economy and present people of working age would have had to have their NI contributions increased be a huge amount � hardly a vote winner.
What thus happened is that the female retirement age progressively was increased to 65 � starting in 2010. Mrs Buildersmate is impacted by this and doesn�t retire until she is 63 yrs and few months � which I why I bothered to check out what the small print says.

On your other point, no you cannot stop paying in. You can stop earning, if you can afford to do so, but you cannot get your State pension until 65. Another anomaly which will rile you further is that males over 60 who are not working get credited with NI contributions to add to their qualifying years. That means that someone who bummed around in the early years when you were working can still stop at 60 (if they can afford to do so) and still get credited qualifying years to the required number.

And finally, the number of qualifying years goes DOWN for everyone reaching State retirement age after April 2010 � to 30 for both males and females.

[buildersmate]

That is, the number of qualifying years for a full basic State Pension.