After the pieties of the LibDem conference and the vacuities of Labour, we're finally getting a bit of substance from the Tories. It's good that at least one of the parties is willing to spell out what might be needed to get the UK's fiscal situation back under control. Unfortunately, however, not all of their ideas have a whole lot of merit.
The media were dominated today by the suggestion that the state pension age for men could rise by one year in 2016, to 66. This step was already in the pipeline under Labour, but for 2026; the Tories argue that the public finances demand that it be done much sooner. (Disclosure: this doesn't affect me either way. I'll be 65 before 2016, and anyway the value of my state pension will be determined more by the nice, kind people in Ottawa than by anyone in Whitehall).
It's amazing to listen to the furore this has stirred up. BBC Radio 2's lunchtime talk show host (mercifully not Jeremy Vine on this occasion) challenged Tory social affairs spokesman Theresa May to explain how the party would dare to impose such a change at such short notice. The line went dead and we didn't get to hear her answer. However, while I can't cite chapter and verse here, I'm willing to bet that the same show has run several items on the iniquity of compulsory retirement within the past few months! I'm not taking sides, just wondering about the lack of consistency. I will say, however, that in my own experience the people who want to work past 65 mostly have cushy office jobs. You don't see many miners or assembly line workers demanding the right to keep working.
The same theme about the supposedly short notice of the change was echoed by a gent on the TV a little while later. He said the change was unfair because people set their financial plans for retirement many years in advance. Maybe I'm missing something, but I'd have thought that was only a problem if the goverment was planning to force people to retire earlier. Anyway, most of what I've read in the past suggests that the big problem we have is not people who plan their retirement finances way in advance, but people who make no provision for retirement at all.
For me, the Tories are on the right lines on pensions. The rest of their ideas affecting the elderly have a lot less merit. Despite the strain on the public finances, the Tories apparently feel they have to honour their previous pledge to eliminate inheritance tax on estates of less than £1 million. As I never tire of saying, I don't find it hard to choose between paying taxes now and paying taxes when I'm dead. The Tories are plain wrong on this issue, though from a party built on inherited wealth I suppose we can't expect anything else.
Then there's the plan to provide free residential care to anyone willing to make a one-off payment of £8000 to the state when they retire. This would remove the supposed iniquity of people having to sell their homes in order to pay for their care, though as I've noted before, this is not iniquitous for the elderly, only for their heirs, and I'm not sure they should be the ones dictating public policy on this. In any event, the Tory policy is already showing signs of being half-baked. The party has already had to "clarify" that the one-off payment will only entitle you to a voucher for "average" residential home costs. Damn! There goes my plan to take over the entire top floor at the Lanesborough and send the bill to David Cameron.
So far then: one good idea; one bad one; one not fully thought out. Still, at least they're trying.
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