Category Archives: News

When will the Government drop the phrase “working people” which excludes “retired people”, “children”, “people with long term illnesses or disabilities” and people who have had to give up work to become full time carers and adopt something more inclusive. Until they do, they will continue to shoot themselves in the foot.

Congratulations on the Lib Dem stand against cuts to disability benefit. In my experience most people who are off work due to sickness or disability would give anything within reason to be able to work. However, if Government wrongly believes that a financial incentive is required then the answer must lie in increasing their potential earnings and not the threat of increased poverty.

Widening income inequality and increasing poverty are the great social evils of our time. And unless Government addresses pay differentials within companies, chasing inward investment in search of growth will make the rich richer and create low paid jobs for the masses. It will increase income inequality and poverty: not reduce it. As did stopping the winter fuel allowance and cutting disability benefit which added to the hardship of the most vulnerable people in our society and, given the wealth of empirical evidence into the social determinates of health which have demonstrated the correlation between income and health, added to the winter pressures on the NHS at the very time Government was committed to reducing waiting times. 

In 2022 / 23 there were 4.3m children in the UK being brought up in poverty – 2/3rds of whom had a parent in work. In March 2023 there were 107,317 children in the care of the local authority in the UK – the highest number ever. In December 2023, 112,660 homeless households were living in temporary accommodation in England, including 145,800 children. A record-high for both categories. Despite low detection rates the courts could not keep pace with demand and prisons were bursting at the seams. There was concern about rising knife crime amongst young people.

Two million older retired people were living in poverty in the UK in 2024. The state pension had fallen further behind average earnings (23% in 2025 from 24.5% in 2020). This was because the “triple lock” was suspended in 2022 /23 and the state pension increased by 3.1% instead of 8% had it been applied. Stopping the “winter fuel allowance” in 2024 represented a further cut of 3% in the income associated with the universal state pension having been part of older retired people’s income since 1999. It was restored for some in 2025 not, it would seem, because of the hardship it caused or because of the increased winter pressures on the NHS, but because of the opinion poll ratings and loss of votes in the local elections. Retired people got no benefit from the two pre-election cuts in National Insurance but do have to pay more income tax due to the freezing of the tax-free personal allowance and lost their free TV licence in 2022. Therefore, after ten years of catching-up due to the “triple lock”, introduced by the Coalition Government in 2010 to reverse the year-on-year erosion since the earnings link was replaced by a prices link in the 1980’s, older people were again being left behind.