Many People are losing their Access to Pension Credit.

xylophone

of the most memorial reasons

The poorest men in the graveyard?

Silvertabby

xylophone said:

of the most memorial reasons

The poorest men in the graveyard?

Ha ha ! Moral is don't post at that time of night without double checking your text!

Changed to 'memorable'.  

LHW99

There will still be , I imagine, older widows where the husband did all the finance, and when it came to taking out an annuity he went for the maximum payment single life version. The widow could then be left with just the old SP as many women even in the 1950's 60's were stay at home housewives, who did not pay NI or get any sort of credits.

Mustbeananswer??

LHW99 said:

There will still be , I imagine, older widows where the husband did all the finance, and when it came to taking out an annuity he went for the maximum payment single life version. The widow could then be left with just the old SP as many women even in the 1950's 60's were stay at home housewives, who did not pay NI or get any sort of credits.

They would top that up with Pension Credit.......surely ??I am single recently received my Pension ....its still well below min wage....even with works Pensions 

xylophone

If a single/widowed pensioner's only income was the Basic SP or under (full Basic = £169.50 a week), it would be topped up through

GPC to £218.15 a week.

Suzycoll

Mustbeananswer?? said:

Pension Credit comes with a  lot of bonuses but a lot of Pensioners are losing theii access to Pension Credit because their State Pension(and their Occupational Pensions in some cases) kicks them over the threshold by a few quid.The bonuses include Free Dental Care...Free Glasses....Housing Benefit ...anybody in this situation ???.

I'm not in this position.

However, I would just like to say that when the NEW state pension kicks in (for everyone) Pension Credit will cease to exist for most. The only people able to make a new claim would be if their income is very low. It will still exist for pensioners already claiming PC (which will stop when they die) 

This was the governments (Labour and Conservative) intention from the beginning when they brought in the NEW State Pension 

hugheskevi

Suzycoll said:

Mustbeananswer?? said:

Pension Credit comes with a  lot of bonuses but a lot of Pensioners are losing theii access to Pension Credit because their State Pension(and their Occupational Pensions in some cases) kicks them over the threshold by a few quid.The bonuses include Free Dental Care...Free Glasses....Housing Benefit ...anybody in this situation ???.

I'm not in this position.

However, I would just like to say that when the NEW state pension kicks in (for everyone) Pension Credit will cease to exist for most. The only people able to make a new claim would be if their income is very low. It will still exist for pensioners already claiming PC (which will stop when they die) 

This was the governments (Labour and Conservative) intention from the beginning when they brought in the NEW State Pension 

I think everyone aged under 70 has retired on new State Pension now.

There are over 150,000 Pension Credit recipients aged under 70.

Remember there are premia for disability and carers which increase the rate of Guarantee Credit.

Pension Credit will continue to exist for many hundreds of thousands of pensioners well into the future.

Mustbeananswer??

It is probably fairer that Pension Credit is to become defunct.I used to work processing claims for Pension Credit.It seemed unfair to top up Peoples Pensions if people hadnt contributed enough through their working life??

Maybe it creates a level playing field for the next generation???
  

Universidad

Mustbeananswer?? said:

It seemed unfair to top up Peoples Pensions if people hadnt contributed enough through their working life?? 

But what was the alternative? We don't live in a society where we let people starve out of poor planning. And I wouldn't personally advocate for one. It is "unfair", but to an extent it's the price of living somewhere worth living.

What would be really unfair is if the state pension became means tested, and you got people who had contributed nothing getting benefits effectively in excess of the state pension, and people who had contributed getting nothing.

Especially if their overall incomes worked out pretty close in the end, which would be the worst case scenario - imagine spending your whole life contributing to both the state pension and a workplace pension and in the end receiving a similar income to someone who had contributed to neither.

hugheskevi

Mustbeananswer?? said:

It is probably fairer that Pension Credit is to become defunct.I used to work processing claims for Pension Credit.It seemed unfair to top up Peoples Pensions if people hadnt contributed enough through their working life??

Maybe it creates a level playing field for the next generation???

I do hope we don't end up repeating history around pensioner means-testing.

Back in 1997, the new Labour govt. significantly increased the minimum level of pensioner income by increasing what is now the amount of Guarantee Pension Credit (back then it was called the Minimum Income Guarantee).

The expectation was that this would be a good news story, welcomed by all, as a benevolent Government provided for low-income pensioner households.

The outcome was great dissatisfaction that people who had saved a little pension now saw zero benefit from that, receiving the same benefits as their feckless neighbour who had saved nothing. Many letters were sent to MPs and Ministers.

The solution was to introduce Pension Credit, with both the Guarantee Component and also the Savings Credit component. This reduced the taper from 100% to 60%. This reduced the problem of people who saved a little seeing no benefit, but at the expense of increasing the scale of means-tested benefits, as now people could receive Pension Credit at higher income levels.

New State Pension then lifted the standard State Pension amount slightly above the standard amount of Guarantee Credit and abolished Savings Credit. The general idea being that for individuals and couples who have a full State Pension they will be above Guarantee Credit level and hence there are no incentive to save problems (it is rather more complicated than that though, due to disability and carers premia, as well as Housing Benefit and Council Tax Support).

The more passporting that gets loaded into Guarantee Credit (Housing Benefit, Council Tax Support, now Winter Fuel, as well as many other things such as dentistry, eye care, TV licenses, etc), the more the arguments about saving incentives and penalising those just above the limit will increase. Which sounds ominously like 1997 all over again.