Age Champions campaign

Thank you for contacting me as part of the Age Champion campaign. You are right to raise this issue and we have been working hard to deliver more dignity and security for older people, by turning our economy around, boosting pensions and protecting the NHS.

 

The state pension is worth over £1,250 more this year than it was in 2010, and will continue to rise. On top of that we have introduced a new state pension and helped people to save more for retirement. That’s all at risk if we do not return a Government which continues to enhance the economic prospects of our country, including through a successful Brexit negotiation.  Only a decade ago, poverty blighted the retirement of many older people. That’s why we introduced the Triple Lock – by which the State Pension rises by the highest of earnings, inflation, or 2.5 per cent. That has worked –increasing the State Pension by over £1,250 and reducing pensioner poverty to historically low levels. We now need to make sure we continue to provide dignity to older people and fairness to working people. We will keep our promise to maintain the Triple Lock until 2020, and when it expires we will introduce a new Double Lock. This will mean that pensions will rise in line with the earnings that pay for them, or in line with inflation –whichever is highest. We will also ensure that the state pension age reflects increases in life expectancy, while protecting each generation fairly.

 

Our new State Pension benefits women and low earners, including those who have spent years at home raising a family. Over 75 per cent of women and over 70 per cent of men are set to gain from the new State Pension in the first 15 years, with over 3 million receiving over £550 per year by 2030. Furthermore, we have given people the freedom to take their pension savings in a way that best suits their individual needs; e.g.as a cash lump sum, or as a regular income. The first full year figures revealed that over 230,000 savers have already taken advantage of the new landmark freedoms.

 

We are also investing £300 million in dementia research.  The UK’s first Dementia Research Institute will receive up to £150 million to drive forward research and innovation in fighting dementia. We have also invested £2.4 million in the ‘Dementia Friends’ scheme which has seen over one million people signed up to become dementia friends who can support elderly people with dementia.

 

We believe in the founding principles of the NHS, which is why we have protected and increased NHS funding since 2010. We will now go further, and increase NHS spending by £8 billion in real terms over the next five years. We will increase the NHS budget so that in 2022-23 it is at least £8 billion more in real terms compared with 2017-18. This will deliver an increase in real funding per head of the population for every year of the parliament. On top of that, we will invest in NHS buildings and technology to deliver better care and more care closer to home.

 

We are providing an extra £2 billion to social care over the next two years. As well as putting money in, we are working to find a long-term, sustainable solution where local authorities learn from each other to raise standards across the system. We will take immediate action to deal with the pressures in the social care system. Anew Conservative government will publish a social care green paper later this year which includes an absolute limit on care costs. This means that, under Conservative plans, for the first time, nobody will have to sell their family home to pay for their care, everyone with assets above this level when in need of assistance will be able to pass on at least £100,000 of their savings to their family - over four times the current amount and there will be an absolute limit on what anyone will need to pay for their care.

 

Thank you once again for taking the time to contact me.