My letter to Iain Duncan Smith

13 January 2013

Dear Mr Duncan Smith

Introducing the Citizen’s Pension of approx. £140 per week

It strikes me that your civil servants are giving you the real runaround on this!

Actually implementing it would be administratively very simple; in fact it would be much simpler than the current system, which is basically the Pensions Credit Minimum Guarantee (currently £142.70 per week for a single pensioner).

Let’s assume that you want every single pensioner to receive at least the Minimum Guarantee level from the “government” (whether that’s the DWP or a public-sector occupational pension). All you would have to do is:

1. Get rid of the means-test for savings and the Savings Credit entirely (which merely reimburses pensioners for the amount of Minimum Guarantee they lose if they have savings, I’m not sure what the point of that is).
   
   
2. Get rid of the means-testing for private pension income or a private-sector occupational pension entirely.
   
   
3. The existing 23 page form could be stripped down to one page, claimants just have to give their National Insurance number and list which pensions they get from the “government” (most will get no more than two or three different ones, so this can easily be cross referenced and checked).
   
   
4. If these add up to more than £142.70 per week anyway, that is the end of the matter, no entitlement to Citizen’s Pension.
   
   
5. If these add up to less than £142.70 per week, then the DWP just pays them the £142.70 in place of all their existing entitlements and non-DWP payments can be cancelled.
   
   
6. For sure, the dividing line between public and private sector is not entirely clear (e.g. privatized utilities; teachers who worked at private schools but receive a pension from Teachers Pensions; private pensions funded by contracted out NIC etc), but somebody just has to draw a line somewhere saying what counts and what doesn’t.
   
   
7. Funding this will be a doddle, it will cost barely more than the existing Pensions Credit in terms of cash paid out; the administrative savings will be enormous, apparently the system requires 18,000 civil servants to administer. If push comes to shove, just get rid of the Winter Fuel Allowance or something.
   

Yours sincerely etc.