17 February 2005
Howard: A better life for Britain's pensioners
"If you want to know about a family, look at how they treat their older relatives. And if you want to know about a country, look how it cares for older people.
People deserve to be treated with dignity and respect in their retirement. But in Britain today too many pensioners are not shown the respect they deserve.
Many pensioners have become prisoners in their own homes - too frightened of yobs and muggers to go out even during the day.
Thousands of elderly patients - people who have worked hard all their lives - have to wait in pain for operations.
And millions of pensioners have been pushed onto means tested benefits - forced to go cap in hand to the State.
Older people make a huge contribution to our society. Where would our charities be without the active contribution of the older generation, who've decided to use their time and energy to give something back to society? How would many mothers juggle the demands of work and family life without help from their own mothers - and dare I say it their mothers in law? And let's never forget that older people contribute around £200 billion to our economy - a quarter of the total.
We are blessed - blessed by a generation alert to what life has to offer; a generation that aspires to second and even third careers, towards travel and the discovery of new opportunities; a generation that accepts its responsibilities to family and to society.
The older generation don't appear to feature in Mr Blair's New Britain. No - New Labour's Britain is a young country, a country where the older generation is airbrushed out.
I am especially conscious of the duty we owe to the older generation. Many served this country at our greatest hour of need, preserving liberty, freedom and Britain's independence for future generations.
Yet for much of their working lives in the post-war years, the older generation were actively discouraged from doing the right thing - penalised for trying to save for their retirement through a toxic combination of high taxes and high inflation.
I am proud to have served in a government that did more for pensioners than any other since the War.
Defeating inflation, cutting taxes, restoring the incentives to save, transforming Britain's economic performance enabled a generation of pensioners to retire having saved more for their retirement than any other in history.
But as Frank Field, Mr Blair's own former social security minister, said Labour took one of the best pensions systems in Europe and turned into one of the worst.
People who saved for their retirement suddenly found that the money they'd put aside simply wasn't there - that the value of their pensions had been destroyed by Gordon Brown's stealth taxes.
Pensioners on fixed incomes have struggled to cope with an ever increasing Council Tax.
And Labour has created a situation today where nearly half of all pensioners are on means testing.
Imagine if you've worked hard and saved all your life - and you then have to fill in a 12 page form just to get what you are due?
Pensioners quite rightly resent means testing.
Over one and a half million pensioners eligible for means tested pensions don't claim them - it's complicated, it's humiliating, it's wrong.
Means testing penalises the forgotten majority for doing the right thing - saving for their retirement.
And it says to the younger generation: "Don't bother to save. Spend whatever you can before you retire, because your future is one of dependency on the State".
I want to live in a country where we honour our older generations, cherish their wisdom and care for their needs - a country where they can live out their days in security and with dignity, respected and protected.
To those who have given so much, we must surely give what is their due.
A strong, prosperous economy is the foundation for everything we do. It supports our pensions in old age. It funds our health service. And it pays for our security - our police and our border controls.
Everyone has a stake in prosperity. But Mr Blair is putting our future prosperity at risk. He's let spending spiral out of control - wasting and taxing as he goes.
Governments which let public spending grow faster than the economy as a whole eventually destroy the capacity of their economies to keep growing.
As virtually every independent commentator admits, Labour will have to raise taxes if they win the election. That is the big economic challenge facing Britain.
Conservatives have clear, costed plans to bring spending back under control, give taxpayers value for money, stop Labour's tax rises and put Britain on the path to lower taxes.
It's why only a Conservative government will be able to meet Britain's obligations to pensioners and give them a better life.
It means a Conservative government can afford to increase the state pension in line with earnings, not prices, to provide an extra £7 a week for single pensioners and £11 a week for couples.
By increasing the basic pension, we will free pensioners from dependence on means tested benefit. It's how we will help restore pensioners' dignity and self-respect, which Labour has traded for increased dependency, turning pensioners into supplicants.
We will also abolish the government's requirement that people with private pensions are forced to buy an annuity at the age of 75.
We will end the situation where the elderly are forced to sell their homes, saying goodbye forever to their independence as they go into residential care.
We will provide security to those who pay for the first three years of residential care by guaranteeing free long-term care after those three years, regardless of the value of their house or savings.
Important as economic security is, pensioners realise perhaps better than anyone else that there's something even more important - the values which underpin the sort of society we live in.
As a society we need more respect, discipline and decent values. We need to put the rights of law abiding citizens first - not obsess about so-called human rights. We need to draw a clear distinction between right and wrong. We need to ensure that actions have consequences.
Mr Blair has had 8 years to do something about the problems facing our country, and now just a few weeks before a General Election, he expects people to believe he's suddenly going to sort things out.
Promises come easy to Mr Blair. The trouble is he doesn't think he has to be accountable for them. By contrast, we have a Timetable for Action - a firm, written commitment outlining what we will do and when we will do it. This means we will be accountable to people - a commitment Mr Blair can't match.
So the choice at the election is clear: four more years of Mr Blair's talk, or a new direction with the Conservatives who will take action on the things that really matter to the forgotten majority.
Unlike Tony Blair, we will be accountable to them: a government that makes a real difference because it cuts the talk and takes action."
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Rt
Hon
Michael Howard QC MP |
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