UK NEWS

1.4 MILLION FORCED OUT OF RETIREMENT

Pensioners must work till they drop /pic posed by model

Thursday June 25,2009

By Macer Hall, Political Editor

MORE than 1.4 million pensioners are being forced to work after reaching the official retirement age, new figures revealed yesterday.

The number of older people remaining in or returning to employment has soared from just under a million a decade ago.

Last night, critics blamed Gordon Brown’s management of the pensions system for forcing the retired to work until they die.

Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Theresa May said: “The reality is that more and more people will have to rely on private savings and pensions if they want to have a comfortable retirement.

“But instead of encouraging a savings culture in the UK, Gordon Brown’s relentless tax raids on pensions have completely under-mined it.”

Neil Duncan-Jordan, of the National Pensioners Convention, said many pensioners were being forced to work to stay above the poverty line. “Britain has long had the worst state pension in Europe.

“If we had a substantial improvement in the state pension, then pensioners would have a choice whether to carry on working until they drop or not. At present, many of them don’t have that choice.”

Key Retirement Solutions Group, a firm specialising in equity release schemes, revealed the figures on pensioner working rates.

The research found that 17 per cent of pensioner households were receiving income from earnings in the financial year 2007-08.

That compared with 12 per cent in 1997-98, when Labour came to power and Mr Brown took over the Treasury.

Figures also showed the proportion of pensioner couples supplementing their income through work had increased from 22 per cent to 29 per cent over the same period.

The research found gross income for the average pensioner was £366 per week in 2007-08, compared with £277 in 1997-98.

Weekly income from employment for pensioners rose from £21 to £36 over the same period.

Income from earnings accounted for 10 per cent of average gross pensioner income in 2007-08 compared to 8 per cent for 1997-98.

Dean Mirfin, Key Retirement Solutions Group Director, said: “The worrying trend that these new figures show will not come as a surprise to anyone, which is that state support is decreasing and pensioners are having to be more self reliant.”

Whitehall officials said many pensioners wanted to work for social and health reasons rather than income.

The Department for Work and Pensions said: “People are living longer, healthier lives, with increasing expectations for retirement and many people are choosing to work past State Pension age because they want to.”

The research follows new evidence Britain provides the least generous state pension in the developed world.

A report from the Office for National Statistics released on Tuesday showed that pensioners living solely on state benefits receive less than a third of the income of average workers.

It put the UK at the bottom of a league table of 17 leading industrialised countries.