Hand back your benefits, Iain Duncan Smith urges pensioners

Better-off pensioners should voluntarily pay back their taxpayer-funded benefits, the Work and Pensions Secretary declares.



Iain Duncan Smith says he “would encourage” elderly people who can well afford to pay for their their own heating bills, bus passes and television licences to return the money to the state.

His intervention comes after David Cameron vetoed efforts by some ministers - including Mr Duncan Smith - to stop paying the benefits to all pensioners, no matter how wealthy, while the rest of the welfare budget is being squeezed.

Mr Duncan Smith previously called the £2billion-a-year universal payments regime an “anomaly”. However, in an interview with The Sunday Telegraph today, he says there are “no plans to change it”.

Instead, he urges the better off simply to repay the money to the Treasury. He says: “It is up to them, if they don’t want it, to hand it back.

“I would encourage everybody who reads the Telegraph and doesn’t need it, to hand it back.”

The future of the pensioner payments has already sparked a fierce political row with Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, claiming they are “difficult to explain” at a time of spending cuts.

Vincent Cable, the Liberal Democrat Business Secretary, has called for the payments to be taxed, arguing that this would allow ministers to claw back hundreds of millions of pounds while avoiding the need for expensive and bureaucratic means-testing.

The winter fuel allowance is worth £200 to state pensioners, or £300 to the over-80s. On reaching 60, prescriptions become free and concessionary bus travel is offered at state pension age, with the level of concession varying across the country. At 75, pensioners receive free television licences, worth £145.50 for colour sets.

Mr Cameron, who pledged at the 2010 general election to protect the benefits for a whole parliament, is understood to have ruled out any move against them in the Conservative manifesto for the 2015 contest.

The Prime Minister is said to be unwilling to go into an election campaign armed with a vote-loser among the elderly, the age group most likely to turn at polling stations and whose ranks contain many natural Tory supporters.

Mr Duncan Smith says: “I’ve no idea what we will put into the manifesto...I have no indication of change. It’s fair to say that [pensioners] are more vulnerable than others and we need to be very careful about what and when we do things, if we ever do.”

Mr Duncan Smith says: “I’ve no idea...

That just about sums this idiot up!"

Vince Cable calls for 'protected' pensioners to lose benefits



Pensioners have been protected during the financial crisis and should now lose some of their benefits, Vince Cable has suggested.

The Business Secretary said it is an “anomaly” that all elderly people in the UK currently receive universal benefits from the Government.

He made the comments after Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, called on well-off pensioners to voluntarily pay back their taxpayer-funded benefits.

David Cameron has promised to protect universal benefits for pensioners, including the bus passes, television licenses and winter fuel payments, during this Government.

They are almost the only area of welfare spending to remain unaffected by billions of pounds in spending cuts.

However, senior minister including Mr Duncan Smith have hinted that the Conservatives will go into the next election pledging to cut pensioners’ benefits.

Speaking to the Murnaghan programme on Sky News Mr Cable suggested that in future pensioners’ benefits should be taxed or means tested.

“We’ve been through a very difficult time after the financial crisis, a lot of people in work have been hit badly but relatively affluent people of pensionable age have been protected and there is an anomaly there and it is a deep anomaly because the reason why a lot of these fringe benefits were brought in like Winter Fuel payment, is because the state pension was being eroded,” Mr Cable said.

“Under this government the state pension has been protected, we’ve introduced the so-called triple lock and there’s much less need for it. I think my party’s view is that we’ve got to address this in a more systematic way rather than just relying on individual conscience and approach the issue of these fringe benefits properly either by suggesting that they should be taxable or restricted to say older pensioners who are less fit for example.”