From the BBC:
Labour has said spending on state pensions is likely to be included in its proposed cap on welfare budgets.
Shadow chancellor Ed Balls told the BBC "at the moment" Labour intended to factor pensions into its calculations for a three-year cap from 2015-16. The opposition said it was committed to maintaining the value of the state pension but welfare expenditure needed to be looked at "across the piece".
The Conservatives said the plans would hit hard-working people (1)...
But [Ed Balls] said including pensions, which forms the largest part of the multi-billion pound structural benefits bill, made sense.
"Look across the whole welfare state and ask what are the drivers of expenditure," he explained, "I think many people watching your programme will not realise that actually today the clear large bulk, most welfare spending is in fact going to people over 60. That is the truth.(2) We should look across the piece"...
Treasury Minister Sajid Javid said: "Now we know when Labour say they want to cut welfare, what they actually mean is cut the basic state pension."
And Conservative MP James Wharton tweeted: "Labour plan to cap pensions spending, really? Hitting those who've worked hard all their lives."(3)
1) Most pensioners don't work any more, and if they did, then they wouldn't mind or notice too much if their pension was less.
2) Yes Ed, anybody who bothers checking the figures is perfectly aware of that. But you and your ilk constantly moan about "Britain's bloated £200 billion welfare budget which consumes a third of government spending" to whip up public indignation about the unemployed, without mentioning that two-thirds of cash welfare spending (and indeed NHS spending) is for old age pensioners.
3) That is a wild generalisation isn't it? There must be plenty of pensioners who have in fact been unemployed for large parts of their lives.
By appointment only
8 hours ago
12 comments:
Re (2) the Mail obligingly - just like that style - has as one of its leads this morning :-
"David Cameron is announcing today that our 'bloated welfare system' is strangling British growth and is one of three ‘national weaknesses' that he plans to radically reform."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2338683/Bloated-welfare-poor-performing-schools-strangling-global-race-says-Cameron.html
"Most pensioners...wouldn't mind or notice...if their pension was less"
wtf?
Would you "mind or notice" if your salary was less?
Presumably not.
WY, try reading the sentence properly before you criticise it, I was referring to pensioners who are still working.
I've lost £1,800 Child Benefit a year in order to fund your goodies, am I complaining? No, not really. You have to take these things on the chin. Time for pensioners to man up a bit, methinks.
Whilst I would not wish to be personally associated with indiscrimate "pensioner bashing" I think it is helpful that "the pensions triple lock" is now being given slightly more close attention. It is an amazingly good deal - especially in the context of "where we are" - that guarantees that pensions rise annually in line with inflation, earnings, or by 2.5 per cent, whichever is the greatest.
That minimum 2.5% annual rise doesn't sit well with any idea of capping the overall AME budget and pretending that other elements within it would not have to be severely reined back to avoid the "cap" being breached - unless we as a nation are going to start defaulting on paying interest on our debts.
Add to that the mooted introduction of the single tier pension where "pledges" have already been made that there will be transitional measures support for the first 5 years, which will give additional support with rent and council tax for those who would have received higher support with these costs had savings credit - which will be abolished for people reaching State Pension age when the single tier is introduced - had it still been in place.
And further to that the existing plans for single-tier pension include some provision for inheritance of protected payments and additional State Pension already built up.
Both Osborne and Balls have some prolonged head scratching ahead of them in order to devise a plausible AME Cap which doesn't immediately signal reductions in other benefits if the triple lock remains.
BE, I'm not doing indiscriminate pensioner bashing. I am objecting to the laughable concept of "hard working pensioners" or the notion that they have ALL "worked hard all their lives".
Most probably will have done (and had plenty of time and opportunity to save up so as not to be a burden on the state) and others clearly were unemployed for many years (or are all the unemployed from the 70s 80s and 90s now all dead already, or still under pension age?)
MW - I hadn't intended to imply, and neither had I inferred that you were indulging in pensioners bashing, indiscriminate or otherwise. My use of the term sprung from having read I wouldn't like to even guess how many comments on how many fora where the suggestion that "pensioners" were now "the easy target" and were duly about to get "bashed" by the imposition of that "cap" which would "at a stroke" ride roughshod over all that "hard work" that they had put in , etc. etc.. Apologies to anyone else who supposed I was accusing them of it either. But to return to the essential point no, there is no good reason that I can think of to actually exclude the state pension and the position of pensioners from either Osborne's CSR or Ed B's fabled "count every pound" scrutiny, and I find it most amusing the hoops both sides are putting themselves through, and the nonsense they are foisting on us all, trying to avoid facing up to that.
Ahem. Even Labour has set its sights on pensioners
10 Jun 2013: Ros Altmann: Thanks to Ed Balls's proposed welfare shake-up, pensioners no longer have a political party on their side
"Having paid national insurance all of their lives, built up the economy, not taken on large debts and saved for their future when they could, pensioners have a right to expect fair treatment. However, they do not have high-profile lobby groups, do not normally march on the streets, cannot really go on strike and are unlikely to cause high-profile economic damage" ....."The reality is that pensioners should not just fear Labour. Worryingly, in one way or another, all political parties seem to have them in their sights and are trying to find ways to try to reduce their incomes."
Funny that, because I had become convinced that that was exactly what all three are putting themselves through hoops to avoid even suggesting might be in any way the case, but there you go ...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/10/labour-pensioners-ed-balls-welfare
BE, allow me to rephrase:
"Having paid low rates of National Insurance all their lives at levels far too low to build up a fund to pay for their own pensions, allowed the economy to be wrecked, run up large debts via mortgage equity withdrawal and attempted to shove the problem onto future generations by voting for policies which ensure house prices and engineering things so that taxes on land values were steadily reduced while taxes on earnings were steadily increased..."
MW - only fair I let Ros counter that, she has ventured BTL to respond to the comments on her article ..
rosaltmann
10 June 2013 6:19pm
Recommend 14
"Median pensioner incomes are less than £15,000 a year. Only the top 20% of pensioners have incomes that would be considered 'comfortable' by those of working age and only around 2% of pensioners pay higher rate tax.
The fact is that the UK basic state pension is already one of the lowest in the developed world, we are already increasing state pension age (that should have happened long ago) and have abolished default retirement age.
The spending on pensions should have been planned for in past decades, we've had so much time to prepare for this but policy has failed.
If we just target 'better off' pensioners, they will be the ones who bothered to try to save for their future and be self reliant, which will provide big disincentives for people to do that in future.
Some money can be saved by taxing pensioner benefits (it makes little sense for them to be tax free) and increasing the age of entitlement to universal benefits could make sense too.
But pensions policy should be made in a comprehensive, joined-up fashion. We need an amount that the state pays to pensioners, a basic amount that is enough to live on, but most people would like more. Then they have an incentive to try to provide more for themselves. If we only give benefits to those whose incomes are low in retirement, there will be scant incentive to be self reliant in the future.
I think our principle of a Beveridge-style basic pension is a good one, paid for by National Insurance. Today's pensioners have all paid their National Insurance and taxes during their lives, there were so many of them working for decades that they built this country up, but we can't then renege on the deal because of huge debts that financed other people. Let's have joined up thinking on pensions policy".
which prompted this almost immediate response
IntoTheSilence
10 June 2013 6:35pm
Recommend 6
"@rosaltmann - The problem is that, as you observe, in the past insufficient provision has been made to pay for today's and tomorrow's pensioners. What you don't mention is that there is no giant state pension pot that people have paid into; pensions are paid from today's tax contributions. And demographic trends (more pensioners) mean that the burden will become even more intense on working taxpayers who are also expected to make significant contribution towards their own tax in future.
So it's hard to see why pensioners should be totally immune from any pressure. If the system is under-funded that implies that today's pensioners benefited from paying less tax than they should have done during their working lives".
The absence so far of a further comeback from Ros suggests either that she agrees, or disagrees, but can't yet quite summon up the words to express the disagreeemnt in a way that would carry conviction.
BE: " If the system is under-funded that implies that today's pensioners benefited from paying less tax than they should have done during their working lives".
Spot on that man!
I did read your sentence.
You were saying that people (never mind who) would not notice if their income were reduced.
I think that's not true, to be polite about it.
That is all.
WY, stop deliberately misquoting me.
I said they wouldn't mind or notice TOO MUCH. I didn't say they wouldn't notice AT ALL. Obviously I MIND that they've taken away our Child Benefit but as I am not rioting, you can safely assume I do no mind TOO MUCH.
Fact is, apart from the 1%, we are all having to make do with less money and higher prices.
If you'd like to join the revolution against the 1%, then welcome aboard, if you think that we can turn the economy round by screwing over the unemployed and ensuring that pensioners are better off each year (apart from outrageous heating bills and miserly interest rates - that's the 1% for you!), well, I think you are wrong.
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