Entries from October 2009 ↓

Evan Davies: Right now we just want to be clear on some of the details because as you will know women’s state pension age is not going to be 65 in 2016, it’s going to be 63 in 2016, it gradually rises thereafter. So you’re not I assume planning to take women straight from 63 to 66 in 7 years time?

David Cameron: No that’s not what we’re proposing, what we’re proposing is this independent person to head a review to look at not just is 2016 the right year, that would be the earliest we could rise it, but also how you sync together the women’s state pension age and the man’s state pension age into the future so that’s the reason. This is a big announcement, it’s an announcement for the future, it’s important to get it right, I’d like to build all party support for it if that’s possible and I think this is exactly the sort of issue that this independent review should look at.

ED: I’m sorry, I had understood last night this was a proposal but actually it’s a review that you’re planning?

DC: We’re saying that we believe, the Conservative party believes that we should instead of this happening at 2026 it should happen at the earliest at 2016 but sometime in that decade, earliest 2016, but that’s what we’d, like to see. We’ll be asking an independent review to look at the issues around that and to make proposals but it’s, yes, we believe it needs to happen.

ED: Well, but you briefed, that it was going to save £13 billion a year, I mean how can you put a figure on it if you don’t know what the proposal is yet?

DC: Well what we know is that every, every 18 months of a different age raises £20 billion so one year raises £13 billion so it is £13 billion from the year in which you do it, it’s an important saving…

ED: But that would include women at 66 would it or, would that be from 64?

DC: That figure I believe actually applies to just raising the state pension age for men from 65 to 66 but as I say…

ED: So it would be more if you included woman rising from 63 to 64?

DC: One of the reasons for looking at this issue through a review is there are complexities but I think the big step to take is the step we’re taking today which is to say the previous agreement we all had that 2026 was the right year, it is not ambitious enough, we need to go further.

Full transcript of Jeff Randall’s interview with Lord Freud.

JR: On that point, if we turned the clock back to the early nineties, and I know that you’re old enough to remember this, I certainly am, it was then the Tories who started this process wasn’t it? They started to slip people off unemployment onto Incapacity Benefit, to massage down the unemployment numbers. So is this finally the Tory Party coming clean?

DF: I think that there was a process there when it was still kind, to be where there weren’t jobs it was kinder to people to say look, don’t go on move over, and actually it was a very easy process to move over to incapacity benefit. That’s how the, that’s how the numbers swelled in the first place and the trouble was that when we got in back, in a good economy, they forgot to close the door. The door was left wide open with these, with these inadequate tests.

JR: This is about closing the door.

DF: And now we’re closing the door.

JR: OK, Lord Freud, David Freud, many thanks for coming in, we appreciate it

Here’s a genuinely interesting story. The Tories say they would disclose the pay of top civil servants. I wonder what they mean by “top” civil servants. Is it Permanent Secretaries only or all Senior Civil Servants? If you know the answer, I’d be really interested to know.

UPDATE: The Guardian says it is 35,000 civil servants, though they wouldn’t disclose their identities. Not sure how that will work. Presumably, they will publish job title and salary?