The ALBA Party’s Westminster Leader Neale Hanvey MP has today (Friday) demanded that the UK Government do not push the country’s pensioners and benefit recipients further into poverty by failing to increase the State Pension and other benefits by at least 10% as promised earlier this year by former Chancellor Rishi Sunak MP.
Benefits like the State Pension, Universal Credit and legacy entitlements such as Disability Support and Jobseeker’s Allowance increase every April in line with inflation the previous September. This means that based on estimated inflation levels for this month, recipients will need to see a 10% uplift in their payments next April.
Now ALBA Party Westminster leader Neale Hanvey MP has demanded that the UK Government do not “betray” pensioners and those that receive benefits by failing to stick to its pledge to maintain an inflation matching rise.
Commenting in advance of the ALBA Annual Conference on Saturday 15 and Sunday 16 October in the Albert Halls in Stirling ALBA Party Westminster Leader Neale Hanvey MP said:
“ While the United States is set to increase social security benefits by 8.7% in line with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) the UK is set to see its pensioners, already among the poorest in Europe, become the poorest within the developed World.
“Scotland has more than one million pensioners, over 400,000 people receive Universal Credit and thousands more rely on legacy benefits.
“It would be a complete betrayal by the Tory Westminster Government if they failed to honour their pledge of pension and benefit increases that at least match the rate of inflation.
“While the Tories may have u-turned over tax cuts for the wealthy the continuing refusal to commit to increase pensions and benefits in line with inflation, as promised by the former Chancellor, threatens to plunge hundreds of thousands of people in Scotland further into poverty.
“Pensioners and benefit recipients are facing a devastating real terms cut to already meagre incomes. It is simply unforgivable for our pensioners and millions of Scots to be robbed like this at a time when many are facing hunger, hypothermia and destitution. The Tories must end this uncertainty now and immediately confirm that they will increase pensions and benefits in line with inflation and honour their promise.”
Speaking at the end of May 2022, former Chancellor Rishi Sunak MP made the following pledge: “None of us know what energy prices are going to be next year. But what I can tell you now and what people should be reassured by is the way our system works, benefits and pensions likely, subject to a review which has to happen legally, they are likely to go up by quite a significant amount because the inflation rate that decides that is set in September.”
The UK Government has now failed to confirm that it will honour its previous commitment. This follows an appearance by Chief Secretary to the Treasury Chris Philp MP on ITV’s PESTON in September. Philp told ITV News’ Political Editor Robert Peston on his political programme that the matter was “under consideration” and a decision would be made in the coming weeks.
The UK Government’s potential policy u-turn has caused widespread immediate concern. Money expert Martin Lewis commented on Twitter that he was:“ Very concerned to hear on #peston govt hasn’t decided yet if it’ll follow thru on prior administration’s promise to uplift benefits with inflation. Even the dire optics of balancing that against high earner tax cuts, pales compared to devastating way it’d pull folk into real poverty.”
Tories,nor Labour can be trusted!
People need money in their pockets to spend in their local areas, small businesses, which are the backbone of local areas need help to survive and thrive. Local council areas need money to provide local services. The Tories would happily see local areas starved until they agree to privatisation of everything that moves, and some things that don’t move. Their policies used to be designed to reward the middle-class and the upper class, while keeping the working poor afloat and just allowing body and soul to hang together in those who did not work. It certainly wasn’t perfect – far from it – but it was in keeping with the general social consensus of the post WW II period. Hundreds of thousands of ordinary joes died and were injured, while hundreds of thousands of women and children worked at home to keep things afloat. The welfare state was their reward.
The Tories never wanted a true welfare state to exist, never mind survive indefinitely. They simply do not believe that anyone should have anything that he or she cannot earn or inherit by advantage of birth or circumstances. From Thatcher onwards, that ethos has hardened into punitive measures against the working-class and the non-working class, while, simultaneously affording more and greater advantages to the fewer and fewer people. Not even the middle-class is getting off lightly this time as Brexit really bites and the repercussions of allowing the underlying advantages for the very few begin to bite even harder.
They pretend to believe that wealth trickles down when anyone with a brain cell knows it gushes up – and away out of the country. How the hell can we survive if the richest siphon off the cream and deposit it elsewhere? Thatcher knew that opening up the barriers to taking money out of the country would not lead to trickle down or anything else. It would lead, within decades, to the mess we are in now. It was and remains simple theft of the country’s resources and assets, concentrating them in the hands of the few – and not just the few, but the sociopathic, never-satisfied, hedge-funding and speculative few.
A 2022 Tory really has to believe deep in what passes for his/her heart that most others who share this UK with him/her are inferior plebs, the burdensome old and the youthful wastrels. Many politicians have colluded in this economic rape of the UK by allowing corporations and global interests to skim off the cream first, before they neck the skimmed remainder, on the basis of party donations, personal enrichment and social/educational advantage for their own. Envy? No. Just an understanding of the reality of kleptocratic Britain today: the old do not deserve a living pension because they do not contribute, is the Tory thinking, unless it’s a nice fat, gold-plated one from skimming in the kleptocracy (corporations and big business) or from enabling the skimming to take place and make it easy for the klepocrats (politicians). Even our profound disgust does not make them blush.
Neale Hanvey is right to rail about pensions. But does anyone actually think you could live on a state pension.
Of course they can’t, with or without inflation adjustment.
And now those who have occupational pensions are about to find their pensions shrink. Not for them increases to keep in line with inflation.
No, much more modest increases, capped at maybe 2% or 5% if lucky, with many no indexation at all.
And then of course there is the no small matter of many many many of the pension funds ready to collapse. Seems that it is only recent BOE intervention that has kept them afloat.
But you know what Neale Hanvey. Maybe, grim as it is we should laugh. We voted for this. Better Together, only in Union will your pension be safe, the Triple Lock, the Brexit Bonus, the Big Red Brexit bus – and we bought it, esoecially the pensioners.
So maybe we should, grim as it is, laugh the madcap laugh. We voted to stay in union, we voted for Brexit, we voted for a Tory Government, so why all the angst now.
As someone once said, let us eat cake. And we do after all have a new King to crown and coronation to celebrate..
Or am I missing something this morning ?
“Or am I missing something this morning ?”
Yes you are missing something i’m afraid as the SNP made clear too in their own Pensions White Paper that
the UK Gov would stop paying pensions to people living in Scotland at the time of a Yes Vote , see item 141 on page 42. https://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/3000/https://www.gov.scot/resource/0043/00434502.pdf
Is this just Neil Hanvey’s Blog nowadays ?
All he is interested in is trying to hang on to His own Job anyway, he will get wiped out at the Next GE
Press releases dear seeing as gow your corrupt British media only print propaganda