SOUTH Lakes and Lancashire women campaigning against ‘pension injustice’ will “fight-on”, despite the result of a landmark high court ruling.

In the case, two claimants had alleged that hikes in the state pension age did not give women (namely those born in the 1950s) enough time to prepare and constituted age and sex discrimination.

However, the high court dismissed their case on all grounds, with judges saying the changes equalised a “historic asymmetry between men and women.”

Carol Haigh is a member of South Lakes and Lancashire ‘WASPI (Women Against State Pension Injustice) Campaign 2018’, a splinter group formed off the back of WASPI (Women Against State Pension Inequality), but bearing the same logo as the original movement.

She said: “Our complaints weren’t wanting to put our pensions back to 60 - we wanted compensation for what had happened to us.

“We just wanted the women of the 1950s to get some form of compensation because of the maladministration by the Department of for Work and Pensions (DWP).”

Mrs Haigh said that at 58-years-old she discovered she would have to wait until she was nearly 66 to claim her pension, and would not receive it at 60 as she had expected to.

She attended a demonstration in Manchester the day before the high court’s ruling and, despite feeling “shell shocked” by the outcome, she vowed to carry on protesting.

“We are not going to stop, no - definitely not,” she said.

“We are going to fight-on. We just need to let this period [of publicity] die down a little bit.”

Tim Farron, MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale, described the ruling as “extremely sad news”.

Regarding the future outcome to be presented by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsmen, he added: “The Government must agree to honour whatever the result of that case.

“The WASPI campaigners, here in the South Lakes and across the country, have suffered for long enough.”