Pension outrage

Published on 17/01/2013 00:00

Like many, I am uncertain about how to vote in the independence referendum, but the UK Government’s proposal for pensions apartheid (your report, 15 January) may make the decision for me.

The present full state pension is £2,000 a year below what the new one will be, in today’s money. Based purely on which particular day they were born on, without regard to any other criterion whatsoever, the government is going to shackle the 14 million current and soon-to-be pensioners to the existing parsimonious pension regime for the rest of their lives, while everyone else goes under an 
entirely different and more generous one.

The government’s contempt for almost everyone now aged 60 or over was shown up by the pensions minister’s dismissive remarks in the House of Commons about the “Grim Reaper” disposing of the elderly with the passage of time.

No matter which particular sub-groups win or lose, the pension proposals constitute sheer, blatant, massive and permanent discrimination on the basis 
solely of age.

In terms of the relationship between government and the individual, it is an outrage. It is an affront to decency, and a glaring breach of the spirit of the Equality Act 2010, and it must not be allowed.

My understanding is that the SNP’s intention in an independent Scotland would be to have a citizens’ pension, with the same regime applied to all.

As a prospective pensioner, I would rather be a classless citizen of Scotland than a second-class subject of the UK.

Alan Crocket

Leyland Road

Motherwell