Pensioners Demand Dignity In Old Age

9.47.58am BST (GMT +0100) Tue 7th Sep 2004

The once silent generation of pensioners has been rising up against the government across the West in recent months. A triple-whammy of Council Tax rises, means-testing and care charges have been hitting local pensioners harder each year.

Cllr Duncan Hames shows Wiltshire pensioner, Marion, what you could buy from his local Holt village store each week with the more than £25 per week pension increase the Lib Dems are proposing.

Charles Kennedy's Liberal Democrats have been putting together a set of policies which they believe will redress the balance and bring an end to these worries for pensioners. The new proposals (to be debated at our conference in Bournemouth this Autumn) offer a new dawn for pensions in Britain.

The new Citizens' Pension would be available without any means-testing to all pensioners aged 75 or over as of right, in the first full year of a Liberal Democrat government, as the first step to providing it for all pensioners.

"I'm giving these proposals my full support" says Lib Dem Parliamentary Spokesman, Cllr Duncan Hames.

"My generation owes an awful lot to pensioners who lived through economic depression, world war, and rationing, to give us the country we have today." adds Cllr Hames.

Lib Dems would scrap charges for personal care in England, as we have done in Scotland, where we are in government, helping end the financial

worries that trouble many pensioners. This and the Liberal Democrat plan to replace the unfair Council Tax with a local income tax would ensure that as well as ending means-testing, the poorest pensioner would still benefit the most.

Key Features of the Lib Dem Citizen's Pension:

Increased by £25.85 to £105.45 per week for a single pensioner - matching the level of the Guarantee Credit, thereby lifting nearly all pensioners out of means-testing.

Annual rises in line with Average Earnings, so that pensioners share in the growing wealth of the country.

Not dependent on your National Insurance Contributions history. This will tackle the unfairness of lower pensions for women.