Many pensioners were desperately disappointed by the Budget. There was nothing in it for them. All the pre-budget leaks about free television licences for pensioners proved to be false.
Because Mrs Thatcher cut the link between pensions and earnings, the gap between retired people and the rest of society has grown steadily. Since 1980, single pensioners have been robbed of £20 a week, and married couples are worse off by more than £30 a week.
Until 1997, all Labour public representatives were committed to closing this gap. But now the Government says the country cannot afford it. Yet the proportion of gross national income devoted to pensions in the United Kingdom is less than six per cent, nearly the lowest in the European Union, and well behind France, Italy, Germany, and Sweden.
Our pensioners need the restoration of the link with earnings to achieve a substantial increase in the basic pension. They need this in order to live. They also want to be able to rely on the National Health Service. They want the cuts in social services provision for elderly people to be reversed. They want concessionary travel schemes extended, and concessionary television licences for all pensioners.
Our pensioners know that senior citizens in other European countries are usually treated better. In Ireland, for example, all pensioners get free use of trains and buses, free television licences, and allocations of free electricity in winter months. Why can't our pensioners have the same?
At present, £5 concessionary licences are available only to those pensioners living in sheltered accommodation, with strictly defined boundaries, a full-time warden and other facilities. The vast majority of British pensioners have to pay the full £97.50 (from April) for the TV licence. This distinction between one senior citizen and another is highly artificial. Pensioners often cannot understand why they are not eligible for a concessionary licence, when someone living nearby is. Since the Chancellor did not offer any help to our pensioners in his budget, on TV licences or anything else, it is clear that pensioners' organisations will have to keep up the pressure for a fair deal.
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