It’s 100 years since the Liberals created the state pension and Pensioners’ Convention members across Britain are “celebrating” this week. I put this in parentheses because, as they’ve told me in no uncertain terms, ”celebration” is not the appropriate word.
Pensioners are now poorer in real terms than they were under the first pension in 1908. Margaret Thatcher’s “tough” (an alternative word for “brutal”) approach to sorting out the econony included getting rid of the link between average earnings and pensions, as though people relying on state pensions were to blame for assuming “national insurance” meant what it said and for not squirreling a proportion of their meagre incomes towards a private pension scheme.
The result is that today, a third of pensioners are living below the poverty line. The basic pension is less than £100 per week, a third less than the government’s own poverty threshold. Some of them may also be due Pension Credits but Gordon Brown’s cynical approach to ”helping” people is so complex and humiliating, most elderly people are too frightened to apply.
This year, Wyre Forest District Council had to make some difficult decisions over its budget. Sadly, three of the cut-backs involved have targetted the most vulnerable members of society.
The uproar over the proposed closure of Dial-a-Ride fails to recognise the council’s understandable issues with the management of the scheme so is not really their fault. However, adding this cut that to limitations on the time when free bus passes can be used and the ending of the taxi coupon scheme seems like Wyre Forest’s pensioners have been a soft target, especially with regard to transport.
A local pensioner recently pointed out to me that, despite their shortage of disposable cash, pensioners still spend money and are more likely to use the older, High Street shops than huge, intimidating superstores. As we now have 31 empty shops in Kidderminster and plenty more in Bewdley and Stourport, and as Labour and the Tories have shut most of the local Post Offices, doesn’t it seem like a false economy to make it harder for pensioners to travel to the shops?
As a Liberal Democrat, I am absolutely committed to restoring the earnings/pensions link immediately. I would hope that those of us capable of earning a living might not feel so bad about paying the extra to give our pensioners a better life?
Neville Farmer
