Socialities
Budgetary reflections custos
The Chancellor was given rather a lot of stick over his announcement that pensions will be raised in the autumn by El for a single person and £1.60 for a married, couple. It is possibly a reflection on the public's wish to do what is right by pensioners that this increase had been almost universally condemned as inadequate or, as one of Age Concern's spokesmen said, "It represents the smallest possible increase the Chancellor could have made." But is it?
Perhaps part of the answer is to be found in the results of a survey conducted by David Piachaud of the London School of Economics. This shows that the overwhelming majority of working people are prepared to pay a much larger weekly contribution in order to provide a more generous pension for existing pensioners. In fact, most respondants volunteered a figure of an extra 80p a week contribution which would have allowed the Chancellor to make a £2 a week increase in pensions.
But just as the Chancellor has been unfairly criticised for not being generous enough to pensioners so has he been wrongly picking up credit for substantially raising the tax threshold (i.e. the point at which poor people begin to pay tax) when nothing of the kind has happened. In 1964 the threshold for a married man with two children stood at £736. By January of this year it had risen to £1,116 thanks largely to the Chancellor's effort to free the poor from income tax.
But if these figure's are re-worked to take account of rising prices then a very different picture emerges. The tax threshold today is well below 1964 figures and, apart from changing the age exemption for pensioners, the tax threshold was left unchanged in this year's Budget.
And so to heating allowances. The Spectator was the first paper to campaign for adequate heating allowances for families and old people. Last week's statement that in future any weekly addition the Supplementary Benefits Commis sion makes for heating will not be deducted from the claimant's long-term addition 'is welcome. But it does not go far enough, and the statement has been widely misunderstood, particularly by social and voluntary workers. It does not mean that all old people and families will automatically receive a heating allowance. Only 400,000 will be eligible. Nor will each of these gain the maximum 90p. Furthermore, the scheme will not come into operation until the autumn.
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