General Chat

Anger over 'shabby' pensions move

Last Updated: Saturday, 12 December 2009, 16:12 GMT- Search: Government pensioners

Government accused of treating OAPs in 'shabby' manner in Alistair Darling's PBRThe Government has been accused of treating pensioners in an "underhand and shabby" manner after it was disclosed that its promised 2.5% rise did not apply to all elements of the state pension.

Chancellor Alistair Darling's commitment to increase the basic state pension was one of the few bright spots in his Pre-Budget Report on Wednesday, as he set out his plans to tackle Britain's ballooning £178 billion deficit.

However the BBC's Money Box programme reported that the uprating would not apply to extras, such as the State Earnings Related Pension (Serps), which will remain frozen.

Pensions Minister Angela Eagle was quoted by the programme as saying that the move would prevent "confusion and unfairness" because Serps affects company pension payments.
At the same time, the small earnings-related supplement called graduated pension which is paid to more than 10 million people, and the additional pension of £57.05 paid to 41,000 men who have wives under 60 were also said to have been held at this year's levels.

And an increase in the extra pension of £7 a week paid to 1.2 million over 60s who have delayed their retirement was reported to be under threat. The freeze is estimated to save the Treasury £350 million in 2010-11.

The move was bitterly condemned by the National Pensioners Convention general secretary, Dot Gibson. "Pensioners will be absolutely stunned that only part of their state pension is going to rise next year. This is unprecedented and the fact that the Chancellor never made this clear in his pre-budget statement looks underhand and shabby," she said.

"Over 2.5 million older people already live in poverty and millions more are struggling to meet the rising costs of living. This decision will certainly push more into financial hardship. We need a state pension that takes older people out of poverty - not one that pushes them further into it. It's simply unfair that the least able are being asked to shoulder the biggest burden of the recession."

A spokesman for the Department for Work and Pensions said: "The Chancellor has announced this week a 2.5% increase for the basic state pension. A further statement to Parliament on Monday will set out all other benefit upratings."

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They wouldn't be so mean to the mps etc!

Lizx

A simple cure will need every pensioner ,no matter how poor ,or better off to threaten the labour government with a vote with their feet move ,every pensioner to vote for any other party but labour ,the government will know that this will mean defeat at the general election.
Too long have people been ignored while the people at the top of the labour tree have been living high on the hog.Fred

Fred, you are right, but who to vote for? None of them really care about the people with not so much money!

Lizx

What else do we expect from this government?

Oh come on Liz..... We don't need any money. We are too old to need any money.
How would the rich live if we had to start 'upping' their taxes?
Come on, lets be fair, some of them may have to start buying their own bath plugs and the like!!!!
I am thinking of NOT VOTING.
After all, we cannot complain if we do not use our vote.
I ALWAYS USE MY VOTE! So why is it I have so much to complain about?
Am I just a grumpy old woman?
Deanna X

Alan, I too have my gripes....
The fact that people who have bought their homes seem to think that we in council houses are somehow 'feckless'.
Not buying a house was a deliberate action on our part, we could have purchased our council house, and years later in a much changed world our son offered to buy ours for us, but we believed in social housing and recognised the income that it generated for the state (cheaper housing, lower taxes, the local environment maintained by the local authority from residual income). We were not disabled pensioners living in council maintained and subsidised sheltered accomodation when the housing boom started, but we believed our rents should pay for those who were, they after all had worked their whole lives in the creation of this nations prosperity and welfare state. This has of course been hugely diminished by the idiotic housing boom and may not survive at all in the not so distant future.

Council houses were a wonderful idea Selling them off was a disgrace.

My husband and I do not have holidays.... EVER, we can't afford them.
Plus my husband worked at back breaking jobs all his life from the age of 13..... Thirteen!!
He left school in the afternoon and started an apprenticeship at a bakery the very next day.
He has done many things in his working life including jobs for nothing more than his alloted allowance when he was made redundant from the steel works.

We have lived on such small amounts of money, that we now concider ourselves REALLY RICH in our old age.
Why shouldnt a pension be taxed? its not a saved pot of capital, its an investment, it returns a profit!!!, pensioners have in the main, had their families, built their homes, why on earth should their continued profits not be taxed and the shortfall be made up by people just starting out in life, millions of whom earn pitiful wages that (IN REAL TERMS) didnt exist when we were in our working prime?.
I don't mean any disrespect by what I say, but I have been hurt many times by remarks such as... "I've worked hard for my money"...my husband worked fourteen hour shifts for most of a decade, then they laid him off and better paid, less hard working homeowners spent the next decade yodeling "I'm a home owning taxpayer"....so what?

also,how could you possibly be better off having lived in rented accomodation? nowadays it would almost certainly have been private (even what used to be council estates are predominantly private, and not as nice as they used to be). Your rent would have outstripped the standard mortgage payment for that property at that period (even if the owner had no mortgage) so you would have paid more than you paid in mortgatge, or had a lesser home or both. Your finances and or your lifestyle would inevitably have been diminished. You would have no asset to convert into an income scheme, or leave to your children (who themselves along with you and your wife would have had a less comfortable life.

If you had never worked, then your home, your holidays, dinners with your wife, the lifestyle, toys trips books, fashionable clothes etc and start in life you provided for your children would never have existed. The self respect gained from providing for yourself and your loved ones, the social lnteraction of work, and the social life it funded would not be part of your life experience your personality and your memories. You would sit in a council house on a council estate with very few worthwile posessions and a much less enjoyable life to look back on.

I also wonder what benefits you think pensioners who were less fortunate during their working lives get that you cant and trump £310 a month (after tax)

Deanna X

Deanna, first and off topic really, you have come such a long way from your stroke, that was an excellent argument you put forward there. Please don't take that as patronising but I remember when you were struggling to get words down and it is wonderful to see you back to your old self and so lucid.

I think the problem with private versus 'council' or Housing association accommodation (social housing) is that it is different now to when you rented your council house Deanna. Yours was the 'pure' way of doing it, you saw council housing as it was meant to be and there was certainly no shame in renting council housing. and for you now, there is no difference, I don't begrudge you your council house which you have probably paid for in rent over the years. What has devalued social housing is the way so many who expect to be housed thus now are not prepared to work to pay the rent as your husband did and are having their rent paid for by the state. before I get jumped on, I have no gripes with people who are genuinely financially distressed having help, those who look for work and can't get it deserve to be helped, my gripe is with those who have never had any inclination to work.
I agree it was not a good idea to sell off council housing.
My OH grew up in council accommodation, I didn't but we decided early in our marriage that the way forward for us was to buy, that was our choice. I find it sad that through that choice and our hopes that our house would provide a nest egg for our children, we have probably just saved a pot of money that will go back to the state when we need a home in our old age. I think that system is unfair on those of us who are in the middle, not poor and not rich.
I don't object to paying tax on my pension, or on my husband's pension, we are fortunate, we both have a small company pension as well as the DSS pension so feel moderately well off. I also don't object to not getting benefits, why should I we have never qualified for benefits and shouldn't now, we have enough to live on. As you rightly say Deanna, we have had and do have a good lifestyle. I consider we are very fortunate. But I do so wish that this government was not frittering away our savings, having let the banks make such a mess of the finances that interest is so low we could well be quite a bit worse off than we expected in a few years time.

Ann
Glos

Whilst the banks messed up the finances, it has been compounded by the Government:
1. Cutting VAT at a cost of £12billion which achieved nothing
2. Cutting interest rates which has slashed the return on savings so that people have repaid debt rather than going out to spend and stimulate the economy.

Whoa, that stirred up some responses!

I didn't see much of the news so haven't heard what if any further statement re benefit ratings was made yesterday.

Deanna, I struggle to know who to vote for when it comes to election time. The people who stand in our area are not always known to me or make their intentions clear, a lot of airy fairy talk but nothing solid to hook on to.

LIzx

Hi Mac, what are you doing up? Aren't you feeling well?

x

Alan made a very valid point.

He said that eventually he will get £710 a month with his pensions including the state pension. All those contributions paid into the private pension he gets have only made him about £30 a month better off than if he had no private pension. This is because he would get about £681.60 a month with pension credit anyway. In fact he may well be worse off because he would not get the pension credit extras like new boiler and heating replacement costs of £3,600 for his property or hospital travel costs paid and cold weather payment to name a few.

After tax deduction, many people get quite modest amounts of private pension. There is no incentive for people to work hard and pay into pension schemes all their lives when the government is paying benefits at a level that is higher than a lot of private pensions is there?

Pension credit for a single person per week:

Guarantee credit.........................£130.00 (tops up any total pensions to this)
Savings credit................................£20.40

Say council tax credit of £20 a week on a small terraced house.

On these amounts alone the monthly figure received could be £170.40 x 4 = £681.60.