cheers

Let me assure you Janice Turner there are millions who do not.

I am a pensioner.

At the beginning of my working life I applied for a National Insurance Stamp Card; I was required, as was my employer, to make mandatory weekly Contributions to the National Insurance Scheme. In return my “contract” with the government would in due time entitle me to an Old Age Pension. My contributions, if I married, would, unless she qualified in her own right, entitle us to a married person’s allowance with my pension. Should I predecease my wife a pension, based on my NI contributions would be payable.

Many women opted out and paid the so called “small stamp” as they had been encouraged to do by the government, being told that their husband’s pension would cover their allowance.

Now, using the red herring of “the overseas spouse loophole” he has reneged on that “contract”; no-one, except the compliant media, is fooled by the red herring – it is clearly aimed at UK residents and when you consider his isolated example of the American man being married to a British woman you can quickly appreciate how much he is scrapping the barrel in his flawed assessment. What he is actually doing is destroying the aspirations and budgeting plans of countless pensioners.

He says “Fairness demanded that we had to change that situation, so we have” but of, course, he hasn’t.

Over half a million UK citizens world wide have their State Retirement Pension frozen at the rate it first becomes payable in the country of their retirement. His parliamentary colleague, Senior Treasury Minister, Oliver Letwin has described this policy as being “a product of history not rationality”.

There is no legal, moral, financial or administrative justification for this policy against which he, Pensions Minister Webb, tabled an Early Day Motion (when in opposition) calling for the abolition of the iniquitous discriminatory Regulation Three.

In his appearance before the DWP Select Committee considering the Pension Reform Bill his defence of the Frozen Pension policy was woeful and quite inaccurate, stating, for example, that the length of time the NI Contributor has spent in the overseas country should influence the rate of pension. Utter rubbish of course – it is the number of qualifying contribution years that are relevant.

As a consequence of this disastrous discrimination one in every twenty five UK pensioners is condemned by the Minister to suffer a downward spiral in their quality of life with many ending their days in poverty. Fairness, Minister? You don’t know the real meaning of the word!

Janice, under the heading of “Approachable” you say “One of the most refreshing things about Steve Webb is, that unlike many politicians, he is welcoming of the opinions of others and always willing to listen to new arguments….”. Is this some kind of joke on your part?

If not, perhaps you could explain why he so naively ignored the Oxford Economic Report when the evidence is incontrovertible that adoption of an unfreezing policy would be to the economic advantage of the UK?

Perhaps, too you could e explain why I and many others have never had a reply from him, have never had any form of justification for the frozen pension policy from him and why his Departmental Staff seem only proficient at cutting and pasting and never actually answer the questions that have been put to them. Approachable? Ivory Tower!

Finally, Janice, by your apparent defence of the Minister I cannot help but wonder just how old you are and how personally affected you are by his many pension follies, of which I have addressed just two.