One person in five over the
age of 60 lives in poverty in
New Labour's Britain.
20 percent of pensioners
live on £4600 a year, according to the Pensions Policy
Institute. The worst off are
usually women, members of
ethnic minorities and those
who were self employed.
It's easy to see that the situation is going to get worse.
Final salary pension schemes
are being closed down and
both employers and the government are reducing what
they provide.
State pension income per
pensioner will fall relative to
earnings, despite the earnings
linking of means-tested benefits. As Rodney Bickerstaffe of
the National Pensioners
Convention says: "everyone
knows that at just 275.50 a
week, the basic state pension
is pitifully low.
Over 3 million older people already live below the official
poverty line and with the closure of many final-salary
company schemes and the near collapse of the private pensions industry, the prospects for tomorrow's penSioners look even worse.
Private pensions tax relief and rebates for contracting out of the state second pension are now the equivalent of 2.5 percent of GDP.
Much of this goes to the rich. Halt the money goes to the richest 10 percent of taxpayers and the top 2.5 per cent grabs quarter.
So, if the richest 2.5 per cent were denied their subsidised pension top-ups, this would more than offset the increase in the state pension bill due to the extra number of old people.
This government does everything it can to help the rich and the powerful. MPs voted to give themselves a hefty pension increase.
A worker in the private sector would need to save £2,000 a month to buy the same pension on the open market that an MP earns in