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Pensioner Poverty: Britain’s Forgotten Poor
By E. Hughes
What things are relevant to a happy and healthy old age, and what are the things that really matter to senior citizens? A proper, decent pension; schemes such as free or heavily subsidised travel, TV licences, generous heating allowances, to name but some of the benefits that all old people should have by rights to live in a comfortable old age. Statistically, old people, suffer in what could only be described as shameful and awful poverty. It is almost a crime to be old in Britain.
What facts underlie this tragedy? Whilst the UK is the fourth richest country in the world, over two million of its pensioners live below the poverty line, and over two million pensioners live in ‘fuel poverty’ - poverty which can be neatly explained as the ‘heat or eat’ dilemma. The basic state pension in the UK is £77.45 a week for a single person, and £123.80 for a couple. This is one of the lowest in Western Europe; less than half of female pensioners receive the full basic state pension, meaning quite simply that many single women are living on even less than the basic rate, which is already low. The UK has the highest amount of winter deaths in the European Union, far higher than those countries like Germany and Finland which experience more severe winters. Perhaps the greatest injustice is that almost £2 billion owed to pensioners goes unclaimed each year; many of those who are in direst need refuse to claim what is theirs by right. There is a strong streak of independence amongst many senior citizens, and a refusal to be seen as a sponger. As with other poverty, there is injustice here, a lack of concern, a wilful blocking of attempts to put things right, and moral cowardice of the highest order and in the highest places. Dare we ask what sort of pension provision politicians, judges, top civil servants and high-ranking officials have? Do we need to ask?
Help the Aged - a group campaigning on behalf of pensioners and senior citizens, state that they are outraged at the continuing high levels of poverty and social isolation of many of Britain’s older people. They add that poverty comes in many different shapes and sizes, and that in spite of the government’s claims of commitment to social justice, pensioners are very often poor not only in terms of the income they receive, but also because of the lack of opportunities available to them. Fundamental to countering this, they add, is the establishment of a decent universal basic state pension that will deliver basic needs.
As for political parties, it seems even at a casual glance that none of them are prepared to consider a fraction of what many have called for and recommended. The Liberal Democrats state on their website that, in contrast to Labour’s complicated plans, they would increase the pension for all pensioners by £5 a week, and increase this by up to an extra £15 a week for older pensioners. This is stated as if it is some huge sum; it is, quite frankly, a joke. And it is part and parcel of a society that condones systematic poverty for many of its citizens throughout their lives, and a bureaucracy that at the end of people’s usefulness, allows them to linger on in miserable want and struggle on in often very reduced circumstances. It is immoral and deeply unjust.