Poverty doubled for 65-year-olds at the last age increase, an MP has highlighted (Image: Getty)
An MP has warned that the last time the UK’s state pension increased, so did poverty. Questions have been raised about the upcoming phased increase from 66 to 67 years old, which began on April 6. This applies to people born on or after the same date in 1960, and will be fully implemented by March 6, 2028. Anyone born between April 6, 1960, and April 5, 1977, will see their pension age rise incrementally to 67.
Johanna Baxter MP asked her Labour Party colleague, pensions minister, Torsten Bell MP, at a meeting of the Work and Pensions Committee in March, what assessment the DWP had made of the impact of the change on the health of individuals and poverty levels of people who have retired but are not yet in receipt of the state pension, if their savings are depleted.
Mr Bell replied: “Those issues are considered inside the department. I can speak for what we will be doing as a Government, which is that the Secretary of State, in carrying out his SPA review, will be focused on that. Rightly, he asks me those kinds of questions all the time about what it means for different people and again, that is absolutely right.
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Torsten Bell, pensions minister, appeared at the Work and Pensions Committee (Image: Getty)
She also warned that it has been known since 2022 that poverty doubled for 65-year-olds at the last increase.
The MP asked: “Why have no mitigations been put in place before now?”
Mr Bell replied: “They absolutely have. That is why we are doing lots of the things we are doing in terms of supporting older workers in the labour market.”
He mentioned WorkWell, a health and employment support service that provides “integrated holistic early help for people with health-related barriers to work”, and Pathways to Work, an employment support package designed to support people with health conditions, disabilities, or refugees into employment.
Mr Bell added: “This investment will provide intensive support to help sick or disabled people unlock the benefits of work. This is all part of us as the Department for Work and Pensions, understanding that it is our job not just to administer a benefit system, but to make sure that we are supporting people with more personalised support.
“That is true for lots of groups, but it will be particularly acutely true for the groups you are talking about today. We do owe people better support, and we are not waiting to do that. We are getting on and doing it.”
Ms Baxter also mentioned that for many people, the increase will mean another year on means-tested working-age benefits. “Carers UK told us that for unpaid carers the differential was quite stark, at £134 a week,” she added.
Mr Bell: “We will all have supported people – I hope we are doing this – who are entitled to attendance allowance, and then their partner may well be entitled to carer’s allowance as well.” He added that the Government spends a lot of time collaborating with the third sector to “make sure that support happens for post-retirement, post state-pension age, but the same applies to before state-pension age, with PIP and with carer’s allowance, which obviously is not means tested”.
