Good week/bad week

Have this week’s events brought good news or bad for older people?

By Rebecca Law, Media and PR Officer

Bad week:
We were left feeling cold this week as we found out that nearly half of all households in fuel poverty contain someone aged 60 or over. The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) released its 2011 fuel poverty statistics showing that fuel poor households in 2009 had risen by a whopping 1 million in the UK (from 4.5 million to 5.5million) since 2008.

And the bad news was compounded – for older people and for all – as Scottish and Southern Energy rubbed salt into the wound by becoming the third major UK energy suppliers to announce double digit price increases.

Older people will be particularly hard hit by the changes. They have to keep their room temperatures higher than younger people to stay healthy, and are likely to spend a lot more time indoors. But when caught out by by rising bills, a reduction in their winter fuel payment and changing eligibility criteria of the Warm Front scheme, it’s going to be a long, hard winter in which they may find themselves cutting back on other basics or risking the cold.

Good week:
Better news this week as Age UK announced they are teaming up with the NHS Confederation and Local Government Group to launch the Partnership on Dignity in Care. The commission, which aims to improve the dignity in care provided to older people, will hear from nurses, doctors, patient representatives and leaders across the health and social care. It follows far too many examples of neglect and ageism in our hospitals and care homes (some, not all, of course). It’s a step in the right direction.

The mystery of IDS' flat rate pensions speech is now solved! #budget11

by Simon Bottery, Director of Fundraising, Policy and Communications

So now we know the solution to the mystery of Iain Duncan Smith's missing speech. He shelved the announcement of a flat rate pension at the Age UK conference because he didn't want to/was not allowed to steal the Chancellor's Budget thunder.

Except that the sound turned out to be not so much thunder as the vague echo of music we've already heard. Once again the government said little beyond the fact that it was considering the options, adding that any scheme would not apply to current pensioners. The figure of £140 was quoted again but without any clue as to whether this was at today's prices or some future date. So what on earth is going on? I don't pretend to know, but on this evidence you can expect the next installment to come not in any official way but as an unattributable briefing to a Sunday paper. Government by spin, anybody?

Officials search Whitehall for rest of Iain Duncan Smith's pensions speech to Age UK conference #af11

by Simon Bottery, Director of Fundraising, Policy and Communications

Officials are hunting all over Whitehall for the second half of Iain Duncan Smith's speech on pensions to the Age UK conference yesterday. The Work and Pensions Secretary was supposed to announce a £140 flat rate pension, heavily trailed in that morning's media. But after a promising opening to the speech, the minister simply called for an open debate on pensions reform and sat down. It is now believed that the second half of the speech was blown out of an open taxi window on the way to the conference, or was eaten by the dog, or spontaneously combusted - no one is quite sure.

Sceptics have raised other, unrealistic possibilities for the missing content. Some have said that it was spiked by the Treasury, which still isn't convinced that the proposal will cost nothing (you can see where they're coming from - administration savings are somehow supposed to pay for a 40% increase for most pensioners and a 10% increase for those currently getting the pension credit top up). Others suggest that the Chancellor loves the idea but wants to have a share of the announcement of it.

A shame. As IDS said in the half of the speech he was able to deliver, the current system is so complex that no one knows what they are going to get, which hardly encourages retirement planning. And since a third of those eligible for pension credit don't claim it, the system allows hundreds of thousands of older people to live in poverty needlessly. So the time for reform is long overdue. Looks like we may have to wait just a little longer for that speech to be found before we can see what type of reform the coalition intends.

Campaign to End Loneliness launches today

The Campaign to End Loneliness launches today, 1 February 2011. The campaign, a collaborative effort between Independent Age, Age UK Oxfordshire, Counsel and Care, and WRVS and funded by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, aims to fight loneliness and isolation in older people.

Although research suggests that loneliness is a greater threat to health than obesity, and as bad as lifelong smoking, fewer than 1 in 5 people have ever seen or heard information about loneliness as a health risk, and fewer than 1 in 3 who work in health and social care professions have.

The campaign aims to raise awareness of the risks of loneliness and to make sure they are treated as a serious risk to public health.

A report, Safeguarding the Convoy, is also published today to accompany the campaign, and calls for others to join and take action to end loneliness in order to future proof forthcoming generations of older people against it.

Visit http://www.campaigntoendloneliness.org.uk/ for more information or to download a copy of the report.