A parliamentary answer published by the Government yesterday revealed that between 44 per cent and 51 per cent of pensioner households were eligible for the top-up credit in 2003-4.

That is from the Daily Mail today, reporting the answer to a question posed by Lord Oakeshott (who is very active on pension issues). The Mail also stated, though the source is not so clear: "Government figures show that only around 60 per cent of pensioners eligible for means-tested benefits receive them and some refuse to claim."

It is a double scandal. The first scandal is that a country whose wealth has multiplied over the past century has been so incompetent that nearly half its elderly are, to use the Victorian word, 'paupers' - that is in receipt of special handouts because they are so poor.

The second scandal is that the government should have chosen to give them money in a form which, it knows, many of them will not get. It seems from the above that 40 per cent is the figure. They have to fill in forms. Naturally the ones who are oldest, weakest, least able and perhaps poorest, too, will be the ones who are likely not to manage to fill in these forms. So the government knowingly runs a system which disadvantages the frailest members of society. It is obscene.

A third scandal is that the government also taxes many of these frail, old, poor people who do not manage to fill in these forms. It is true that there is a bigger personal tax allowance for older people. But elderly people can still be taxed when, according to the government's own ideas, they are in 'poverty'. I am referring here to income tax. But of course elderly people also face, disproportionately, council tax. They, like all of us, regularly pay VAT, too and fuel duty and so on. Then the government condescends to give them a little back. Only it doesn't because the process is too difficult for many of the elderly.

The full Daily Mail article does not appear to be online. But here is a previous article on the take-up of means-tested benefits by 'senior citizens'.

Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Tax and growth

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