The government is making huge changes to pensions, financial
support for those working in low-paid jobs and with disabilities, and benefits
for those out of work.
For the last year, I have been warning about the real impact
of some of the cuts that are being implemented this year. It has been very
difficult to get media attention – and, often, public attention – for these
issues. The result is that the government has ploughed on regardless, until the
very last minute.
A good example of this has been the ‘bedroom tax’. Last
week, we saw last minute changes to try to exclude foster parents, service
personnel and some families with disabled children from the scheme. None of
these concerns was new. Some of us had been raising them for some time. There
will be some horror stories yet to come from the other concerns that the
government has failed to address.
So let me use this opportunity to flag up another issue, so
that the government will have no excuse that it wasn’t warned.
The Government's latest proposal for a single tier pension
will mean that about 430,000 women born between 6 April 1952 and 6 July
1953, will not qualify for the new pension but men of the same age will. That’s
about 700 women in every parliamentary constituency. Those women will draw a state
pension income of around £1,900 a year (£36.55 a week) less than a man of the
same age and, even if they do receive their pension earlier, they are still
likely to be worse off
Government Ministers claim that those women will be better
off simply because they are allowed to retire earlier. It’s disingenuous. If
these women are retired for 20 years they would lose considerably more than the
pension received for the earlier retirement.
Don’t say you haven’t been warned. Make your views known
now.
