Plaid's 'living pension' promise

Ieuan Wyn Jones said the increase could be introduced in stages

Plaid Cymru leader Ieuan Wyn Jones is pledging to spend an extra £20bn a year on providing a "living pension", as the party focuses on the general election.

Mr Jones said all pensioners would receive the state pension plus the Pension Credit "a number of pensioners now have to claim for".

He said the rise could be introduced in stages, with the over 80s helped first.

Lib Dems said they were "half-baked" plans, the Conservatives and Labour said Plaid was indulging in "fantasy".

Mr Jones, also deputy first minister in the Labour-Plaid Welsh Assembly Government, was speaking on BBC Radio Wales before formally announcing the policy in a speech at a bowls club in Mountain Ash in the Cynon Valley on Monday evening.

He told the Good Morning Wales programme: "You would provide to all pensioners the existing basic state pension together with the amount of the pension credit which a number of pensioners now have to claim for and, of course, a quarter of them don't do it.

"That would be a living pension, which would be the basic pension together with the current level of the pension credit."

'Huge'

The Institute For Fiscal Studies (IFS) estimated it would cost £20bn a year to provide a universal state pension at the level of the Pension Credit guarantee.

But Mr Jones suggested "the actual cost of doing it, over time, would be much more modest".

"If you, for example, started off with people over the age of 80, the cost of that would be £2.8bn - which actually is the cost of replacing Trident every year.

"And then, of course, as time goes on, and as finances allow, then you would increase it to younger pensioners, 75 and 70 and so on.

"And also you've got to remember that not all pensioners, aged 65 for men and 60 for women, actually want to retire at that time, so we would also allow more people to actually work longer, and therefore the actual cost to the Treasury wouldn't be the £20bn a year immediately," Mr Jones said.

But Welsh Liberal Democrat leader Kirsty Williams predicted the "half-baked plans" would "never see the light of day" because "the sums just don't add up".

She said: "You simply cannot fund huge pension increases for millions of people, without endangering the front line services upon which many older people depend.

"More importantly you can't implement a policy in Westminster with just two or three MPs."

'Almost meaningless'

Shadow Secretary of State for Wales Cheryl Gillan MP said it was "fantasy economics that Plaid cannot deliver" and said the Conservatives had "pledged to restore the earnings link for the state pension".

"In order to fund this we will hold a review with the aim of bringing forward the increase in the state pension age to 66 but no earlier than 2016 for men and 2020 for women," she said.

"We are being responsible and putting forward proposals to tackle the government's debt crisis while ensuring a decent standard of living for people in their retirement," Ms Gillan added.

Labour described the Plaid proposals as a "fantasy wish-list, centred on a 30% pension increase" which "ignored fiscal and political realities to such an extent that it made the speech almost meaningless".

Ynys Mon MP Albert Owen said there were "so many fault-lines in this policy pledge it is difficult to know where to begin".

"Schemes like the Winter Fuel Payments, rubbished by Plaid at the time of introduction, have provided genuine support to pensioners in Wales," he said.

But a spokesman from Age Concern and Help the Aged welcomed Plaid Cymru's announcement as "an acknowledgement that the state pension is too low".

"Age Concern Cymru and Help the Aged in Wales have argued for years that the state pension is too low and that it should be set at the level of the Pension Credit guarantee," he said.

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