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email Message To The Chancellor
privateoffice@hm-treasury.gsi.gov.uk
16th March 2004
Dear Chancellor
A message from the National Pensioners
Convention Scotland
The message below about the Pension Credit
still relevant was sent to you by electronic mail on the 6th
October 2003. The real price tag of this uneconomical exercise has now
well exceeded the cost of the Holyrood Parliament and similarly still
ever spiraling. I enclose a copy of our Policy Statement on the Council
Tax and for the reasons made clear, sincerely request your support for
urgent action in terms of increasing the level of grant the national
budget makes to local authorities in Scotland.
Sent October 6th 2003: - Today for the first time ever in
British history, the introduction of the Pension Credit will means-test
the income of half of the entire pensioner population, despite your
expressed aim in 1993 to abolish such a policy. The most worrying aspect
of this move is that it undermines the very existence of the state
pension. In fact, it encourages people to survive below the poverty
level on benefits, rather than take them out of poverty through the use
of a decent universal state pension.
There is also little doubt that it represents
one of the most complicated pieces of pension legislation ever enacted,
as well as being expensive to administer and unpopular with those who
feel they have to explain every last detail of their personal lives in
order to qualify for money which they believe should be theirs by right.
As a result of these issues, it is estimated
that over 1.5 million older people will fail to claim the Pension Credit
despite being eligible to do so. If this is the case, it will be
impossible to describe the policy as a success.
That is why the T&G RMA supporting the
National Pensioners Convention Message is urging you to re-think your
existing pensions policy and immediately increase the basic state
pension to the level of the Guarantee Credit (Minimum Income Guarantee)
and thereafter restore the link with average earnings.
Yours sincerely,
George Henderson
Secretary |
