UKIP Manifesto 2010 Pensions
Britain’s pensioners deserve better. They are suffering not just from complexity in benefits and EU-driven energy price rises but also from the great indignity of means testing. Meanwhile the UK is staring into a pensions black hole created by Labour’s huge expansion of the public sector and that party’s vicious removal of dividend tax credits for private pensions. Without urgent redress, Britain will be bankrupted by a commitment it cannot hope to honour. UKIP will:
· Simplify pensions and remove unnecessary and degrading means testing for our senior citizens. We will roll existing state pensions, Pensions Credit and the Winter Fuel Allowance into a flat-rate, non-means tested, non-contributory and non-taxable Citizen’s Pension worth at least £130 a week for all pensioners aged 65 and over. There will be no reductions for those with personal savings or a private pension. People whose existing entitlement to state or public sector pension is more than £130 a week will continue to receive the higher amount. The Citizen’s Pension will be payable to all UK citizens, including those who have worked abroad
· Target pension contributions’ tax relief at low and average earners, reducing the annual limit for tax-relievable pension contributions to £10,000 gross from the current £255,000 (compensating for higher earners’ flat tax advantages)
· Reinstate the dividend tax credit at 20%
· Bring generous unfunded public sector final salary pensions back into line with typical private pension provision. Calculations show a fund of around £1,000 billion is required to cover the future liabilities of public sector schemes. This is simply unsustainable. UKIP will freeze public sector pensions, reflecting today’s challenging economic conditions
· Scrap the costly and counter-productive statutory Pension Protection Fund and National Pensions Savings Scheme
· Save the UK from a potentially ruinous pensions burden by leaving the EU and its enforced common pensions pot. While the UK has 74% of its GDP invested in UK private pensions, Germany has a mere 5.8% and France 5.6%. Further integration of the UK into the EU, through Euro membership for example, would turn this into a pensions tax time bomb
Download the full Pensions policy from the Policies section of www.ukip.org
UKIP Manifesto 2010
UKIP Manifesto 2010 : Introduction
UKIP Manifesto 2010 : The Economy: Tax, Budget and Regulation
UKIP Manifesto 2010 : The Economy: Jobs, Enterprise and Skills
UKIP Manifesto 2010 : Immigration and Asylum
UKIP Manifesto 2010 : Law and Order, Crime
UKIP Manifesto 2010 : Healthcare and the NHS
UKIP Manifesto 2010 : Education and Training
UKIP Manifesto 2010 : Pensions
UKIP Manifesto 2010 : Welfare and Social Security
UKIP Manifesto 2010 : Foreign Affairs and International Trade
UKIP Manifesto 2010 : Energy and the Environment
UKIP Manifesto 2010 : Transport
UKIP Manifesto 2010 : Housing and Planning
UKIP Manifesto 2010 : The Constitution and How We Are Governed
UKIP Manifesto 2010 : Culture and Restoring Britishness
UKIP Manifesto 2010 : Food, Farming and the Countryside
UKIP Manifesto 2010 : Other Specific UKIP Policies
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