Campaign news

The Cuts - the impact on older people, by NPC

12th December 2010

We are all affected by public spending cuts, whether as workers or in the services being cut from our communities. It is this government’s intention to make ordinary people pay the price for an economic crisis which they did not cause.

The savage attacks on the public sector - both in terms of jobs and services - and the cuts in welfare will mean that there will be a disproportionate impact on women, disabled, LGBT and black and minority ethnic people. The cuts will be felt by the most disadvantaged who bear no responsibility for the banking crisis but will now suffer its harshest consequences.

In a series of articles the LRC has asked key campaigning organisations to explain how the cuts will impact upon particular communities, entrenching disadvantage.

The second article comes from the National Pensioners Convention. Download the paper here. It looks at the effects on older people of cuts to local government, the welfare state, and the NHS and highlights the current situation:

• 3.5m pensioners are living in fuel poverty;
• Nine pensioners died every day during last winter of cold related illnesses;
• The government will give no guarantee that the Winter Fuel Allowance will not be cut in 2011;
• Since the link of the state pension to national average earnings was removed in 1980 by the Thatcher government, the basic state pension (currently £97.65) has declined from about 20% to about 15% of average earnings;
• 2.5m pensioners are living below the OECD poverty level of £170;
• 90% of these are persistent poor;
• Over 50% of pensioner households are on means-tested benefits;
• Pensioners are up to £710 a year worse off than other households as a result of the rising cost of living according to the commercial arm of Age UK;