WHEN Peter Hain speaks of three-quarters of people believing that they will need more than the state retirement pension to live on, the only surprise is that the proportion isn’t higher.
We can only surmise that the dissenting one-quarter are unaware of the extent to which new Labour has run down the value of the state pension.
It’s not a matter that bothers self-centred MPs, since they have a diamond-encrusted, solid gold pension scheme that looks after them very nicely, thank you very much.
It’s the rest of us whose pensions requirements cannot be afforded.
Despite Labour’s promises in opposition to restore the link between the state pension and average earnings, which was fractured by Margaret Thatcher’s Tory government nearly 30 years ago, it has refused to do so.
As Chancellor, Gordon Brown insisted on “targeting” cash for pensions on the poorest, ensuring that only those desperate enough to submit to means testing could get Pension Credit.
And he has remained obstinate in his insistence on this position despite nearly six in 10 pensioners being put off claiming benefits because means testing is too obtrusive.
This means that 1.8 million pensioners who are eligible for Pension Credit don’t claim it, resulting in £2.5 billion set aside for pensioners being unclaimed each year.
Given that means-tested benefits are 10 times more expensive to administer than universal payments, the argument for scrapping means testing is unanswerable.
But, rather than accept that government penny-pinching and bureaucratic procedures are partly to blame for pensioner poverty, Mr Hain points the finger at pensioners themselves.
It’s all the fault of individuals’ fecklessness, it appears.
If only people, when they were in employment, hadn’t chosen to spend their wages on expensive sports cars, works of art and champagne lifestyles, they could have contributed to private pensions.
Mr Hain appears oblivious to the fact that most people don’t contribute to private pensions because their wages are barely enough to keep body and soul together at the best of times.
As Unite T&G leader Tony Woodley points out, the situation has deteriorated in the past decade, on Labour’s watch, with the number of workers covered by a final salary pension scheme halved to three million.
Three million workers have been robbed of the pension that they had been promised and on which they depended, only to be fobbed off with an inferior money-purchase scheme.
And what has the government done about that? It’s done a Pontius Pilate, washing its hands of the problem and asserting bosses’ right to renege on binding agreements.
And that’s to say nothing of the number of workers who lost out on both occupational and private schemes, either by dint of companies going bust and swallowing up pension funds or by crooked insurance companies mis-selling dodgy schemes.
Workers cannot rely on employers or private companies to underwrite their right to live in decency when their lifetime’s labours are over.
Labour MP Kelvin Hopkins has to be right in his assessment that the only real solution is a substantially larger non-means-tested basic state pension, linked to earnings and backed up by a comprehensive state earnings-related scheme for all.
WHEN Peter Hain speaks of three-quarters of people believing that they will need more than the state retirement pension to live on, the only surprise is that the proportion isn’t higher.
We can only surmise that the dissenting one-quarter are unaware of the extent to which new Labour has run down the value of the state pension.
It’s not a matter that bothers self-centred MPs, since they have a diamond-encrusted, solid gold pension scheme that looks after them very nicely, thank you very much.
It’s the rest of us whose pensions requirements cannot be afforded.
Despite Labour’s promises in opposition to restore the link between the state pension and average earnings, which was fractured by Margaret Thatcher’s Tory government nearly 30 years ago, it has refused to do so.
As Chancellor, Gordon Brown insisted on “targeting” cash for pensions on the poorest, ensuring that only those desperate enough to submit to means testing could get Pension Credit.
And he has remained obstinate in his insistence on this position despite nearly six in 10 pensioners being put off claiming benefits because means testing is too obtrusive.
This means that 1.8 million pensioners who are eligible for Pension Credit don’t claim it, resulting in £2.5 billion set aside for pensioners being unclaimed each year.
Given that means-tested benefits are 10 times more expensive to administer than universal payments, the argument for scrapping means testing is unanswerable.
But, rather than accept that government penny-pinching and bureaucratic procedures are partly to blame for pensioner poverty, Mr Hain points the finger at pensioners themselves.
It’s all the fault of individuals’ fecklessness, it appears.
If only people, when they were in employment, hadn’t chosen to spend their wages on expensive sports cars, works of art and champagne lifestyles, they could have contributed to private pensions.
Mr Hain appears oblivious to the fact that most people don’t contribute to private pensions because their wages are barely enough to keep body and soul together at the best of times.
As Unite T&G leader Tony Woodley points out, the situation has deteriorated in the past decade, on Labour’s watch, with the number of workers covered by a final salary pension scheme halved to three million.
Three million workers have been robbed of the pension that they had been promised and on which they depended, only to be fobbed off with an inferior money-purchase scheme.
And what has the government done about that? It’s done a Pontius Pilate, washing its hands of the problem and asserting bosses’ right to renege on binding agreements.
And that’s to say nothing of the number of workers who lost out on both occupational and private schemes, either by dint of companies going bust and swallowing up pension funds or by crooked insurance companies mis-selling dodgy schemes.
Workers cannot rely on employers or private companies to underwrite their right to live in decency when their lifetime’s labours are over.
Labour MP Kelvin Hopkins has to be right in his assessment that the only real solution is a substantially larger non-means-tested basic state pension, linked to earnings and backed up by a comprehensive state earnings-related scheme for all.