The retirement ‘time bomb’
Mike Weatherley, Conservative Parliamentary Candidate for Brighton Pavilion has been reviewing the ‘Pensions Time Bomb’, combined with the current plight of pensioners, and the results are quite staggering. Labour has allowed this country to slip into a very dangerous position. Labour has simply just not managed any part of the pensions area well. Some facts:
• The amount people are saving for retirement has almost halved under Labour.
• Pension funds have been raided by £5 billion a year because of Labour’s pension tax.
• 65,000 people have lost retirement savings because their company pension schemes have been closed.
• There are now over 5 million pensioners subjected to means testing, nearly half of all pensioners.
• The Pension Credit is so complicated and unpopular that 1.7 million eligible pensioners fail to take up the money they are entitled to.
• Over two million pensioners still live in poverty.
• Typical pensioners have seen more than a third of the increase in the basic state pension snatched back in higher council tax.
Mike said:-
“The poverty
that pensioners have been driven to by this Labour Government is scandalous.
But you don’t just have to take my word for it.
Adair Turner (former Director
General of the CBI and is now the Chairman of The Pensions Commission)
after a wide ranging review on pensions said in his report that the
Government’s means-testing agenda is the wrong approach: ‘Means-testing
within the state system both increases complexity and reduces, and in some cases
reverses, the incentives to save via pensions which the tax system creates. The
scope of this means-testing would grow over time if current indexation
approaches were continued indefinitely’
The 1997 Labour manifesto said they
would ‘support and strengthen the framework for occupational pensions’. They
also said that ‘occupational pension schemes are the great welfare success of
this country’ And in his 1995 party conference speech Tony Blair claimed that
his pensions policy aim was to remove is to remove the stigma of means-testing
for ever’ Labour are all talk and no delivery, and you simply can’t
believe a word they say on pensions any more.
It is time for action to ensure that everyone can retire with dignity, and to recapture the savings culture.
• Conservatives will raise the basic state pension in line with earnings,
not prices.
• Conservatives will increase the basic state pension by £7 a week for a
single person and £11 a week for a couple.
• Conservatives will abolish the requirement to purchase an annuity at the
age of 75.
• Conservatives will replenish failed company pensions by using the assets
of unclaimed and dormant bank and building society accounts.
• Conservatives will take a million pensioners off means testing.
• Conservatives will create new incentives to save with our Lifetime Savings
Account – this will be a flexible savings account, which will reward
people’s savings with government contributions.”
Mike concludes:-
“Enough is enough. The
under funding by individuals of their pensions is an economic time bomb. We
must give future pensioners incentives to save and provide adequately for
retirement. And for today’s pensioners, they deserve better. That is why
the Conservatives have set out a timetable for action to ensure that everyone
can retire with dignity.”