NEWS that the Health Secretary, Frank Dobson, is encouraging fellow ministers to include means-testing the basic pension among proposals to reform welfare will be certain to cause outrage among the millions of current state pension holders - whether Labour supporters or not - who have contributed a lifetime's National Insurance payments to ensure a full state pension entitlement on retirement.
Such a move would also affect retirees with occupational pensions who had taken state pension payments into consideration when calculating their final retirement income.
This association believes that government should retain the basic tenet of universal pension provision and is campaigning for: a properly-funded pension scheme, payable to all contributors by right; the retention and expansion of the SERPS scheme; a re-linking of the state pension to earnings rather than inflation and the separation of pensions funding and payment from the welfare budget.
Our national headquarters, ARP/050, Greencoat House, Francis Street, London SW1P 1DZ, would welcome readers' views on this important subject.
MARIA CLARK (Mrs) Chairman, ARP/050 Friendship Centre, Blackburn and East Lancashire, Manor Road, Blackburn.
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