Hard-hitting report demands end to winter fuel payments, free TV licences and bus passes » Government should abandon triple-lock that guarantees pension increases, says Lords committee » Age UK agrees more should be done to help young people –
Lords committee report says it is time to cut back dramatically on free bus passes and winter fuel payments for elderly people.
A call for pensioners’ benefits – including free TV licences, bus passes and winter fuel payments – to be scrapped or scaled back has been made by a parliamentary committee.
Ministers have been urged to tilt the balance between the generations back towards younger groups because the spending power of retired people has now overtaken many workers in their twenties and thirties.
Help should be stepped up for younger people in the jobs and housing markets, the Lords Committee on Inter-generational Fairness and Provision also argued in a report published today. The peers said that age-based benefits and allowances had been justified to tackle pensioner poverty, but that the time had come to cut them back dramatically.
They said the free TV licences for all over-75s should be phased out, with the Government left to decide whether to subsidise them against a broader measure of household income. Free bus passes and winter fuel payments – currently £200 for under-80s and £300 for over-80s – should become available five years after a claimant reaches pension age, they added.
Their report called for an end to the so-called “triple lock”, which guarantees the state pension rises by the highest of inflation, wage growth or 2.5 per cent. It should be replaced with annual increases to pensions in line with average earnings, the peers argued, while better-off workers over pension age should continue to make national insurance contributions if they are still working.
The committee chairman, Lord True, said benefits needed to be re-balanced towards the young to prepare the country for 100-year lifespans.
“We are calling for some of the outdated benefits based purely on age to be removed,” he said.
“Policies such as the state pension triple lock and free TV licences for over-75s were justified when pensioner households were at the bottom of the income scale, but that is no longer the case.”
Ministers were condemned in the peers’ report for doing too little to ease the shortage of affordable homes for young people to buy and rent.
The Government was urged to give councils greater freedom to build homes and to tailor policies to meet the housing needs of younger adults.
Peers also argued that ministers should boost funding for further educational and vocational training.
- i Newspaper
- By Nigel Morris POLITICAL EDITOR
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