Former pensions minister Ros Altmann has called on the government to come up with an emergency plan to help pensioners this winter, as inflation soars but pensions lag behind.
According to Altmann, pensioners are facing “a perfect storm” this winter as they struggle to keep up with rising energy and food prices but their pensions fail to keep up to help with the costs.
Therefore, Altmann said the government should consider an emergency manifesto, in particular to make up for cutting the state pension triple lock earnings increase.
Altmann said: “The ONS estimates from before the pandemic showed that over 2m pensioners were in poverty and over 1m were estimated to be suffering extreme fuel poverty.
“The rise in heating bills and the meagre 3.1 per cent increase in state pensions in April, following the government’s decision to abandon its triple lock manifesto promise, will leave more pensioners living on inadequate incomes.”
One thing the emergency manifesto should do is increase the take-up of the state pension top up, Altmann said.
She said latest figures showed that more than 1m pensioners (920,000 pensioner households) miss out on the pension credit top up for their state pension, which can be worth thousands of extra pounds a year.
“The DWP and HMRC could work together to identify those who are entitled to an increase in payments, rather than waiting for people to claim,” Altmann suggested, adding that a national advertising campaign could also be used to help raise awareness.
This pension top-up should also be made available to more households, Altmann said.
She added: “The age at which pension credit can be claimed has risen from age 60 in line with rise in women’s state pension age and the rules now require all household members to be over state pension age before claiming pension credit.
“That means many pensioners who would previously have been able to receive extra help with their living costs are no longer able to do so.”
Altmann said this hit those who are elderly but have a younger partner caring for them, who cannot work and are no longer eligible for extra state pension top-ups as they would have been in the past.
The emergency manifesto should also look to accelerate efforts to find and reimburse all pensioners who have been underpaid by the government, Altmann said.
“All the over 80s, who are not receiving their full £82.45 in Category D pensions, should be contacted to get them their extra payments,” she said.
The DWP announced at the start of March 2021 that it would check hundreds of thousands of pension records to see if people have been underpaid.
People were urged to check their state pension as under the old system married individuals could claim a basic state pension at 60 per cent of the full rate based on their partner's contributions, where this would be bigger than the pension they would get based on their own contributions.
Since March 17, 2008, this uplift should have been applied automatically but before this date, a married individual had to make a “second claim" to have their state pension increased when their partner turned 65 - and many people did not make that claim.
amy.austin@ft.com
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