FROM 2016 onwards men in the United Kingdom will not qualify for the state pension until they reach 66, under plans announced yesterday to reduce a sharply increasing pensions bill.
The plans were sharply criticised by trade unions and groups representing the elderly as an attack on the poor, who, they pointed out, tend to die earlier.
The new 66 years threshold will come into force from 2016. The threshold is to rise further, to 68, by 2048 under an acceleration of plans inherited from the last Labour government, which had intended to raise the pension age for men to 66 by 2024.
Labour had planned to bring in the 68 years threshold in 2046, two years earlier than the Conservative/Liberal Democrat alliance has now decided.
The UK state pension is worth £97.65 (€118) weekly, though it is likely that some other benefits currently enjoyed by pensioners such as free bus passes and heating allowances could face restrictions over coming years given the government’s determination to cut the cost of welfare.
Next year it intends to block employers from forcing employees to retire at 65, with some exceptions and also to end rules that force people to buy an annuity at 75.
“Britain used to have a pensions system to be proud of, but due to years of neglect and inaction we are left with fewer people saving into a pension every year and the value of the state pension has been eroded, leaving millions in poverty.
“We must live up to our responsibility to reinvigorate the pension landscape,” said work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan-Smith.
“People are living longer and healthier lives than ever, and the last thing we want is to lose their talent and enthusiasm from the workplace due to an arbitrary age limit. We also need to recognise that to meet the challenge of providing an affordable, stable pensions system in a society with ever increasing life expectancy, people will need to work longer,” he said.
Trades Union Congress general secretary Brendan Barber was sharply critical, saying the decision would do nothing to keep older people at work and simply see them claiming the dole before qualifying for the pension.
“Raising the state pension age will hit the less well-off far more than the rich,” he said.
Men of 65 in Kensington and Chelsea in London can expect to live a further 23 years, while those in Glasgow can only expect 14 more years.
National Health Service statistics show that men in Blackpool die on average at just 73.2 while their counterparts in Kensington and Chelsea live on until 83.7.
Women in Hartlepool have the lowest life expectancy of 78.1 years. This is 9.6 years less than women in Kensington and Chelsea.
And the gap is getting wider every year. Life expectancy rates are rising much faster in affluent areas, with average life expectancy in England for men standing at 77.7 and for women at 81.8.
Meanwhile, the leader of Britain’s general union, the GMB, Paul Kenny said the decision illustrated the government’s class bias.
“The government knows that manual workers in the industrial regions of the UK do not enjoy anything like the same life expectancy as professionals or other classes of employees. To force someone who has done a lifetime of toil on building sites, farms or in factories to work until they are 66 is completely unacceptable.”
Equally critical, the UK’s most influential lobby group for older people, Age UK said more must be done first to reduce health inequalities between the rich and poor and to create better job opportunities for older people.
“Failure to do so will force millions of older people, many of them poorer and with lower life expectancies, to work for longer or face another year trapped in unemployed limbo,” said spokeswoman Michelle Mitchell.