Tag Archives: universal benefits

The impact of bus cuts on older people in rural areas

Posted on May 17, 2013 by | 2 Comments

We have heard a lot lately from various politicians about the need to examine the universal benefits received by older people and in particular the concessionary bus pass. It seems that in the age of austerity, even something that has been so successful and proved so popular, is subject to review.

But it is not just the threat from government to withdraw the bus pass from all bus cutsbut the poorest, there is also the threat to bus funding from the imminent spending review. Cuts to bus services will hit the poorest and most vulnerable the hardest.

Older and disabled people have hugely benefited from free bus travel and often rely on public transport to do their shopping, get to their GP and hospital appointments and visit friends. Continue reading →

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Posted in Communities and inclusion, Government, Money Matters, Public Policy, Transport

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Winter fuel payments again……

Posted on January 10, 2013 by | 8 Comments

Winter fuel payments are in the news yet again. I have lost count of the number of reports and media articles I have read about why these should be reformed and how the money could be better used to cut the deficit or transform our failing system of care or solve some other crisis.  And please don’t tell me again that millionaires don’t need a winter fuel payment or a bus pass. Of course not – but let’s make policy changes based on the position of majority of older people not the small minority who are very rich. (when the Deputy Prime Minister pointed out last year that Alan Sugar didn’t need a bus pass Lord Sugar tweeted  in no uncertain terms that he doesn’t have one!).

Winter radiator - Photo: HarlanH via Flickr

Photo: HarlanH (Creative Commons)

So should we be looking at restricting universal payments to the less well off? It has been suggested that they should just go to people receiving Pension Credit. However that would mean that up to 1.6 million of the poorest older people would miss out because they are not claiming the Pension Credit they are entitled to. The big advantage of universal payments is that they reach everyone including those do not take up means-tested benefits. They also provide some extra help to the ‘not rich but not poor’ group who can feel because they made sacrifices during their working lives they miss out on benefits and are penalised for having saved. Continue reading →

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Posted in Income, Money Matters

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Squeezing the rich pensioners

Posted on October 9, 2012 by | 5 Comments

When Andrew Dilnot published his proposals on funding social care, he envisaged that a better, fairer system would require extra funding from public expenditure, and observed that since older people would be the principal beneficiaries, it would be preferable if this was raised by taxes which older people contribute to so that not all the cost would fall on the younger population.

Since then, a variety of ideas have been floated from a range of different quarters.   But the discussion has also become conflated with views about intergenerational fairness as the Government tries to bear down on public spending, and comments about the ‘generosity’ of some universal benefits received by pensioners.   There has long been a rumble of complaint that rich pensioners receive the Winter Fuel Payment.   Frank Field waded in, arguing that before we find more money for older people, we should be looking at the poverty and the shortage of opportunities for children.   The Lib Dem think tank CentreForum published a paper looking at the tax reliefs available to older people and their exemption from National Insurance if they are working over State Pension Age.   Now, in the margins of the Lib Dem and Labour Conferences, the appropriateness of pensioners’ benefits has again bubbled up, though the Coalition Agreement specifically protects these till 2015. Continue reading →

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Posted in Income, Money Matters, Social care

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Means testing could make things worse for those that need help most

Posted on June 10, 2012 by | 7 Comments

It seems incredible that, in the name of cost saving and to prevent a few well off pensioners from receiving some pretty modest benefits, ministers can be entertaining the idea of extending means-testing.

Making people apply for benefits they are entitled to is notoriously inefficient. Pension Credit is not claimed by about 30 per cent of those eligible and Council Tax Benefit by about 40 per cent. When Gordon Brown refused to increase the state pension above the rate of inflation (with a freakish inflation figure in 1999 leading to a 75p increase), he argued that a means-tested Pension Credit was the efficient answer.

However, even he exercised a balance, by making the Winter Fuel Payments universal and restricting the free TV licence to the oldest – who are demonstrably the poorest part of our none-too-wealthy older population, and of course a means-tested claim costs ten times as much to process as an automatic one.

Bizarrely this proposal is surfacing as the ONS publish figures on the poverty risk facing older people ion the UK and the EU. It turns out, according to their figures, that older people in the UK are faring worse than their counterparts in most of the rest of Europe.

There are more than enough poor pensioners struggling with energy bills and food price inflation to maintain some parts of our benefit system which actually get help to them.

Some older celebrities were proud to proclaim last winter that they were donating their Winter Fuel Payment to charity – that is fine and that is their right. It is hard to imagine many of the seriously rich pensioners on the buses with their passes.  Continue reading →

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Posted in General, Income

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