Councillor Paul James (letters 4/11/03) is right to point out that Mr Dhanda has damaged attempts to gain cross-party support for a Minister for Older people by devoting so much of the motion to congratulating the Government.

Two-thirds of older people needlessly live under the poverty line. This is disgraceful. We are the fourth largest economy in the world. We have enough money to make our businesses pay less tax than any other country in Europe. You would think that we could afford to pay our longest serving citizens above survival level and not subject half of them to humiliating means testing. Yes, the means-testing that Gordon Brown said in 1993 that the next Labour government should end.

A new report (1) from the Green Party shows there are other rip-offs affecting pensioners, like the government's proposal to give a pensioner a £30,000 lump sum if they postpone retirement and keep working until they're 70. This is a gamble for a 65-year-old but a money-making certainty for the treasury. Any pensioner who takes part in this scheme will not only go without their
pension for those five years. They will of course also keep paying tax. If the government gets its way, and every 65-year-old is persuaded to gamble on their longevity like this, the government will be almost £11 billion better off at the expense of pensioners.

And Labour still haven't restored the link with earnings that the Tories broke in 1980. Conservatives have now offered to reinstate the link, but they outrageously plan to do this by cutting the benefits of some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in society.

Because of successive Tory and Labour government's, today's pensioners are £30 a week worse of than they would have been. A decent state pension is a minimum. Britain can afford to pay every pensioner enough money to retire in dignity and comfort. The sooner the government act on this, the better.

Philip Booth, Press Officer, Gloucestershire Green Party

Note:
1. All these figures are from Progress on Pensions: The Green way to a fairer future, www.greenparty.org.uk/reports , published last week.