The Chancellor has air-brushed us out of his budget. Whilst everyone else benefits from an increase in personal allowance, pensioner’s Age Allowance is to be frozen at its current level until it finally disappears. This will cost those of us whose income is below £25400 an estimated £1bn by 2015. (Average pensioner income is about £15000
We believe this move is to pave the way for the merging of income tax and National Insurance which the Chancellor also mentioned in his speech.
No doubt we will be promised an additional personal allowance to compensate for the fact that retired people don’t pay NI, but after this betrayal why should we trust them?
It was also announced that the new universal state pension which will probably be set at £140 will only apply to new pensioners leaving existing ones on the means tested system for the rest of their lives, leaving one in four pensioners living in poverty. For those approaching retirement age there will be a date –of birth lottery. We could have a situation where someone retiring on one day could be on the old system and get less than someone on the new. There is no additional money being introduced to improve the UK’s abysmal state pension, it’s just been handed out in a different way and there will certainly be losers.
Contrasting the treatment of older people with those in receipt of child benefit, it’s truly amazing how the ”benefits cliff-face” has to be moderated for those earning £50,000, to £60,000 a year but pensioners on low incomes have to live with it every day of their lives with the pension credit system. For us one penny over the limit and your benefit is gone.
The Chancellor’s pledge to cut welfare payments by £10bn over the next few years will also worry pensioners who may think that bus passes and winter fuel allowances may come under threat.
The long awaited social care white paper is being delayed without any explanation leaving around a million older people struggling with a broken care system the consequences of which are exposed almost weekly by report after report from inspection bodies.
But we have a warning for the Chancellor. “Not for nothing are we known as the third rail in politics – touch us and you die.”
