Conservative & Labour

Liberal Democrats

The married and single pensions are now worth £29.50 and £18.45 a week less respectively than they would have been, had the link between earnings and pensions not been abandoned.

The elderly have been neglected in pension scandals and NHS underfunding.

Patients in some residential homes are often verbally and physically abused, with cash being taken from their bank accounts without permission. Many staff are poorly trained and sometimes patients go without meals so the homes can cut overheads and make a small profit.

In 1998 Labour deliberately mislead the elderly, promising them that winter fuel supplements will be paid before March - the facts of the matter are that 85% of payments will be made during March itself or even later.

This means that a large number of elderly people will be unable to afford to adequately heat their homes during the winter months.

• Target extra help those most in need so that no older person need fear poverty. To stop people failing through the net, we would base the right to a state pension on residence not contribution.
• Phase in the equalisation of the pension age over 15 years.
• Introduce a flexible decade of retirement between 60 and 70 for men and women, so people can decide for themselves when to leave work. Pensions would be higher for those who retire later.
• Increase the basic state pension and link pensions to earnings.
• Increase cold weather payments and pay a double pension in the first week of December.
• Reduce VAT on fuel to 5%.
• Outlaw age discrimination.

To protect private pension schemes from fraud, we would:

• Make sure pension schemes always have more trustees democratically elected by the current employees and pensioners that by the employer.
• Set up a fund to compensate for pension lost through fraud, negligence or breach of trust.
• Require all occupational pension scheme trustees to publish and circulate annual reports to be scrutinised by a regulatory body.