Too old for pensions
Sir: Freedom from want being the first purpose of the Beveridge Plan, 6,500,000 pensioners, in- cluding 65,000 well-to-do persons such as Mr Mac- millan and Lord Montgomery, are to receive additions of lOs or 15s per week to their pensions of £4 or L6 10s. On an actuarial basis, the con- tributions paid would provide a pension of not more than 9s a week.
But some 200,000 people, of average age
eighty-five and several over ninety, who were not allowed to pay contributions because they were too old, • are to receive nothing. They are to remain pensionless. Their savings and incomes have already lost two thirds of their value since retirement They are denied any compensation for present or future rises in prices because—Miss Herbison explains—the Government cannot depart from the sacred contributory principle by which contributions pay for pensions! She ignores the facts that the Treasury presents f300 million a year to the fund for the benefit of pensioners, and that f55 million of the f220 million needed for the present increases is to come from the Exchequer. The non-pensioners ask only for that part of the pension which is not covered by contributions: f20 million wbuld suffice for that purpose.
The question is one of public morality. We deny the right of the Government to make presents of public funds to persons who have pensions, particularly when they are rich people, while denying any share to the oldest people in the community who have no pensions. In the United States or in France, such improper use of public funds would be overruled by the courts. Here, apparently, the Government can play the devil and inflict injury on its victims with impunity. Under socialism, these pensionless old people must hear their remaining year or two of existence amidst rocketing prices and increasing misery— in a society which stinks of money.
F. O'Hanlon Hon. Sec., Old Age Non-Pensioners' Association, 27 Hayling Rise, Worthing
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