Devil's in the detail

Many people anticipating retirement life on the current state pension of £107.45 will look at Cameron's headline figure of £144 and think they're in heaven, but, as ever, the devil is in the detail.

Means-tested benefits for pensioners already work out at £142.70 a week, which indicates that the government is not injecting substantial sums into the pension pot.

The Morning Star has always opposed means-tested benefits and supported demands by the pensioners' movement and the trade unions for a state pension as of right on which retired people can enjoy a decent standard of life.

The government is flirting with decency by offering a non-means-tested increase in the basic pension, but it is demanding huge increases in employer and employee National Insurance contributions that will affect about six million workers.

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It won't affect government ministers, MPs, company directors and top City businessmen because they already have personal arrangements that render the state pension irrelevant.

What is planned by the Tories and Liberal Democrats is the usual redistribution of poverty within the working class, designed to provoke complaints by those who lose out against those who gain.

Those who lose out will be the majority, as GMB national officer Brian Strutton has made clear, pointing out that, for instance, the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) will be weighed down by the extra demands imposed by government.

Hammering LGPS contributors and the scheme itself with a £6 billion tax burden risks undermining its viability and cutting low-paid workers' purchasing power.

Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith wallows in the duplicity that is typical of this government, claiming that concern for women is a major factor in this change.

Taking women for granted as carers or as parents taking career breaks to raise children has scarred the pensions and benefits system for decades.

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The scandal could and should have been dealt with long ago but for a lack of political will.

Duncan Smith's "good news for women" rhetoric is shameful for a politician who knows that gender justice formed no part of the government's motivation and who cannot be unaware of the scale of hardship that this measure will impose on millions of low-paid workers who depend on the state pension.

In any case, National Pensioners Convention general secretary Dot Gibson points out that five million older women pensioners are likely to miss out on these new arrangements.

Also missing out are 1.8 million current pensioners who would be eligible for means-tested benefits but prefer not to submit themselves to examination.

Gibson sums up the government approach as a "con trick," explaining that future generations of pensioners will have to pay an extra five years worth of National Insurance contributions, work longer before they can retire and end up with less than they can get today.

It's difficult to argue with such a summation, which emphasises that state pensioners are being robbed once again by those who have no stake in the state pension system.

All of us pay towards the multimillion-pound pension pots of the City directors, so it's time that the richest in society paid their fair share in a progressive taxation system so that decent pensions could be provided for all.