Why I Won’t Vote for Andy Burnham

by Les May

IN a few weeks time Andy Burnham will be soliciting my vote in an attempt to persuade me to re-elect him as Mayor of Greater Manchester in the poll to be held on 7 May 2020.  He will be wasting his time.

I have voted Labour all my life, but I will not give my support to any candidate who promotes policies which deliberately discriminate against people on the basis of their sex.

Burnham has been pursuing a policy which does just this since 2018 when he introduced a scheme to issue bus passes to those born between October 6, 1953 and November 5,1954 and hence too young to qualify for an English National Concessionary Travel Scheme (ENCTS) pass, BUT ONLY IF THEY WERE FEMALE.  He now proposes to extend this to women born between November 6, 1954 and April 5, 1955.

However you care to wrap it up this is deliberate, systematic discrimination on the basis of a persons sex.  Imagine the outcry if Burnham introduced a scheme offering bus passes to people in this age group, but insisting that only those who were white would be eligible.

Men and women in that age group received exactly the same notice that the age at which they would become eligible for a State Retirement Pension and hence an ENCTS pass was being raised to 66 years. Does being a man make someone less deserving than if they are a woman?

Burnham needs holding to account for this.  The majority of people doing the ‘grunt work’ in our society are men. Feminists don’t seem to have been quite so enthusiastic about getting more women into these kind of jobs.  Perhaps it is time for men to press their unions to ask Burnham for some answers.

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/transpot-free-bus-pass-women-17693595

https://tfgm.com/tickets-and-passes/womens-concessionary-travel-scheme

https://www.londoncouncils.gov.uk/services/freedom-pass/tfl-60-london-oyster-photocard

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Historic Direct Discrimination Against Men

by Les May

A FEW MONTHS before my wife reached the age of 60 the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) wrote to her with all the necessary paperwork to allow her to claim her State Retirement Pension (SRP), which she received the week following her birthday. When I was 65 I received no paperwork from the DWP and had to ask for it. The week following my birthday I got nothing, so I wrote again and got an apology, but still no pension.  I wrote again asking for my pension and for the interest I had lost due to the late payments. I eventually got the pension, but was asked to prove that it would have been into an interest bearing account. It was and I received a £30 payment for the trouble I had been caused.  I estimate that I ‘lost’ about £35,000 by having to wait until I was 65.  My experience of dealing with the DWP suggest that it can reasonably be said to be guilty of institutional sexism.

You will perhaps understand that I have zero sympathy for the women behind the Backto60 campaign who are complaining that the State Pension Age (SPA) for women should still be 60 as it was from the 1940s until April 2010.  The Pensions Act 1995 provided for the SPA for women to increase from 60 to 65 over the period April 2010 to 2020.  These changes were announced in 1995 i.e. 15 years before they were to be implemented.  Don’t confuse these women with the so called Waspi women who are complaining that this process of raising the SPA for women has been accelerated for the period after 2016 when it was 63.

Last week two judges of the High Court, Lord Justice Irwin and Mrs Justice Whipple, dismissed a case brought by two women ‘on all grounds’ saying: ‘There was no direct discrimination on grounds of sex, because this legislation does not treat women less favourably than men in law. Rather it equalises a historic asymmetry between men and women, and thereby corrects historic direct discrimination against men’. (my emphasis)

Oh dear!  Oh dear!  This isn’t how equality between men and women is supposed to work is it?

However things are not quite what they seem and having to work longer may have its compensations after all.  Men born before 6 April 1951 and women born before 6 April 1953 receive a SRP of £129.20. To get the full basic State Pension a total of 30 qualifying years of National Insurance contributions or credits are needed.  Men born on or after 6 April 1951 and women born on or after 6 April 1953 receive a SRP of £168.60, i.e. £39.40 more!   The downside that to get the full basic State Pension a total of 35 qualifying years of National Insurance contributions or credits are needed, but some SRP is payable to people with 10 qualifying years.

The fact that even though the changes were announced 15 years before they were implemented, some women are claiming that they knew nothing about them, illustrates that in general people do not understand the benefits system they support through their taxes and at sometime in their life may be beneficiaries of.  But ignorance does not seem to deter some people from seeing anyone who is ‘on benefits’ as a ‘scrounger’.

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Sauce For The Goose

by Les May

WHEN my wife got to sixty she got her State Retirement Pension (SRP). When I got to sixty I had to wait another five years until I was sixty five.   Some months before she reached retirement age my wife was contacted by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) telling her what to do. Her pension was paid immediately after her sixtieth birthday.  Some months before I reached sixty five I contacted the DWP to set things in motion.  My pension wasn’t paid immediately after my birthday.  In fact it was not paid until I had written to the DWP twice to ask why I had not received it.

You will perhaps understand that I am less than sympathetic to all the whingeing from some women that they were not properly made aware that the age at which they would receive their SRP was increasing.

Incidentally these changes affected men too.   As the age at which SRP was paid was raised the age for receiving concessionary fares, a.k.a The Bus Pass, tracked this.   Previous to this the age had been set at sixty in 2003, though men were still expected to continue working up to the age of sixty five.

Finally one woman has set the record straight.  Writing in the ‘i’ a lady by the name of Kate Roberts writes;

‘I can’t remember exactly when I found out that I would not be getting my state pension at the age of 60 in 2011, but it was well before the change was made.

I doubt that I was unique in that – if something on the news or in the papers may affect me, I take notice.  I rang the helpline number for a pension forecast, and was informed the changes were to be incremental.

The information was easily and freely available unless you lived in darkest Peru.  I do have sympathy for anyone who is struggling to carry on working, but I really don’t see how it can still be coming as a surprise.’

Kate Roberts is quite right.  The Pensions Act 1995 contained the following provisions:

Equalisation of pensionable age and of entitlement to certain benefits

Schedule 4 to this Act, of which —

(a) Part I has effect to equalise pensionable age for men and women progressively over a period of ten years beginning with 6th April 2010,

(b) Part II makes provision for bringing equality for men and women to certain pension and other benefits, and

(c) Part III makes consequential amendments of enactments,

shall have effect.

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1995/26/part/II/enacted

Under the Pensions Act 2011, women's State Pension age will increase more quickly to 65 between April 2016 and November 2018.  From December 2018 the State Pension age for both men and women will start to increase to reach 66 by October 2020.

Whilst the 2011 act accelerates the rise in pensionable age for women so that the rise to sixty five is completed two years earlier it is difficult to see how anyone can complain that the rise has come as a surprise to them. 

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Debbie Abrahams MP debates state pensions!

Debbie Abrahams - Shadow Pensions Minister

THE UK state retirement age will probably be increased to 70 before many millennials - young people who are 18 to 35 today - retire and there won't be a pot left for  them  to piss in, because all the baby boomers born after WW11 will have gorged themselves on welfare benefits and left them with sweet FA.  Many of these baby boomers with their triple-lock pensions, have been Conservative Party voters and hard-line 'Brexiteers'.

I'm just at the back end of the baby boomers, born in the early 1950's.  No free bus pass for me at 60, but 66, assuming there are still free bus passes by 2020.  By then, I'll probably have a long white beard and a walking stick and possibly riddled with arthritis, and too ill to get on a bus.  However, if I lived in Wales, Scotland or NI, or an area of Greater London, I'd get a free bus pass at 60 but not in Labour controlled Greater Manchester, the home of the NORTHERN POORHOUSE.   And Labour are as much to blame for this, as the Tories.

While successive governments have increased the UK state retirement age, arguing that we're all living longer, we now know that since 2010, rises in life expectancy have stalled.  Researchers at the University of Manchester and York have found that while the rate of premature death in people under 45 was falling in the south, it was stagnating in the north.  In 2015, the number of premature deaths of people aged 35 to 44 was 50% higher in the north than the south.

It is argued that deindustrialisation in many parts of northern Britain, has led to precarious employment, unemployment, and increasing poverty.  Economic recession, along with the austerity programme and cuts to public spending, have resulted in an increase in deaths by suicide, - now the biggest cause of deaths of British men under 50 - substance abuse, and chronic health conditions among young people whose life chances and quality of life have worsened.  The university researchers also point out that the regional death gap has widened since the banking crisis and financial crash in 2008.

In his book 'The Health Gap 2015', Michael Marmot, professor of epidemiology at University college London, argues that while we have the medical knowledge to improve public health, life expectancy and quality of life, good health, is far too important to be left solely to doctors.  He points out that good health is not just related to access to technical solutions but to the nature of society - "the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age, have a profound influence on health and inequalities in childhood, working age and older age.  In short, levels of education, the social class we are born into, our income and wealth, and the region where we live, are all  factors which have a bearing on how long we will live. If you increase the age at which people can retire, then it is well known, that people who do heavy work in manual occupations are those ones who are most likely to die before reaching the state retirement age.

Shadow Work and Pensions Minister, Debbie Abrahams MP, has launched a national conversation with communities across the country to discuss State Pensions as part of the Labour Party’s commitment to ensure dignity and security in older age. She wants to hear your views and is inviting people to attend an event hosted by herself as part of a nation tour on:-

Date: Saturday 9^th September
Time: 2pm
Venue: John Holt Centre, Birch Avenue, Westhoughton, Bolton, BL5 2NR

In a circular to Labour Party members Debbie Abrahams says:

"Older people have been badly let down by the Tories. During this year’s General Election they failed to provide transitional protection to women born in the 1950s who have had the increase in their State Pension Age accelerated; in addition, they failed to guarantee they would protect the State Pension ‘triple lock’ and Winter Fuel Allowance.

Most recently the Government announced that they will be accelerating the increase in the State Pension Age to 68 at the same time it was announced that increases in life expectancy had ‘ground to a halt’.

This contrasts to the Labour Party’s manifesto pledge to retain the triple lock and winter fuel allowance, as well as provide support for 1950s born women through pensions credit and further transitional protections.

Labour has also rejected the accelerated increase in the State Pension Age to 68 and are examining options for a flexible retirement age.
Please RSVP here.

If you have any additional access needs please email jane_logan@labour.org.uk.

Please pass this invitation on to others in your area who may be interested in attending.
See you there."

Debbie

Debbie Abrahams
Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions