Lib Dem Work and Pensions spokesman Steve Webb was quick to share his thoughts about George Osbourne’s plan to raise the retirement age with Lib Dem Voice readers yesterday.
Today he has issued a stinging rebuke of the implications of the Tory scheme for women:
Women have been a total afterthought to this announcement. It is simply impossible for the Tories to save £13bn a year by raising the state pension age for men alone.
George Osborne’s plans would require the pension age for women to increase each year until 2016. The Tories must come clean or risk leaving every woman in the country in a pensions limbo.
The Tories still seem to think that as long as women have husbands they don’t need to worry about their pensions.
Today’s cobbled-together announcement will create massive uncertainty for millions of people. It shows the Conservatives are living on borrowed time with their pensions proposals.
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7 Comments
So.. these women.. do they actually want equality or only the sort of equality that suits them?..
It’s Osborne, not Osbourne!
Oops!
Erik – true equality would see their pension age raised above mens’.
Osborne is, of course, right that the cost of maintaining the retirement scrapheap is unsustainable. Sadly, all his big business masters will let him do is tinker round the edges instead of addressing the issue head on.
Vince Cable, by contrast, has grabbed the bull by the horns. He has called for the abolition of the mandatory retirement age and the extension of employment protection to people over 65. Absolutely right and full marks, Dr Cable. The fact that it is legal to deprive people of their livelihood merely because they are aged over 65 is an outrage and human rights defecit that no liberal can tolerate. In addition to which keeping people idle on £93 per week is a senseless waste of a valuable resource.
True, the Brown/Mandelson government did incorporate the EC Age Discrimination Directive into UK law, but it did so reluctantly, and has made it perfectly clear to big business that (1) those nasty Europeans forced them to do it and (2) they can flout it with impunity.
Is this not an issue where Liberal Democrats should be leading the way?
“true equality would see their pension age raised above men’s”
No, that would only be equality to an actuary. To real human beings, it’s simply penalising women for living longer. (And on the same basis, smokers and heavy drinkers should probably qualify for their pension at 53.)
(And yes, I know you were only joking, but sometimes I can’t help myself…)
Malcolm – I consider myself corrected 😉 Did you know that an actuary is someone who thought accountancy would be too exciting?