The inside track since 2003

Jon Sopel: What is you reaction to these proposals?

Joan Bakewell: Well I’d like to know quite what they are because confusion has entered right away because they don’t see to have been thought through properly. The statistics that we have been given that they .. mean and women should both be retiring at 66 in 2016 means, if you follow that through, that women would have to jump three years in one particular year, it would have it rise .. the pensionable age would have to rise from 63 to 66. Now David Cameron ahs already said on the morning programme that that is unacceptable so we still aren’t sure how this is going to be resolved and there is going to be a review about it. So it is a bit of a confusion, however it is certainly the case that the age of state pensions will have to rise and I think it is very interesting that they are trying to bring men and women into the same sort of schedule of aging because of course women have a life expectancy much greater than that of men.

JS: Do you think that is a good thing?

JB: I think .. they collide. Yes it seems to me I think only just to men whose life expectancy is much shorter that they should not .. that women should not have an advantage over them, that doesn’t seem just and I think we must always be aiming for the just solution here. And I don’t think we have got that.

JS: The other thing about this is, if you speed up the timetable by which you want to introduce something like this, if you were planning your retirement and your are dependent on being able to draw the state pension at a certain age and suddenly find you can’t well then your plans are thrown into confusion?

JB: Yes well if I was women this very moment expecting to retire in sic years time and it was .. I beg your pardon, in ten years time which is the Labour Party target to 2020 and I was suddenly told that it was in five years, six years time, that would really .. those are the people who are going to be most upset you know .. the people who always seem to get the hard end of the stick however, those are the women who are going to be anxious, the women who are already looking forward to retirement in about .. and getting their pension when they ..erm ..getting their pension soon and it is now going to be extended by the Tories to an earlier date than Labour.

JS: Presumably the other people within that subsection who will be most effected are those that are most highly dependent on the state pension, maybe it is fine if you have got a private occupational pension that you can fall back on or other money but if your livelihood is dependent on receiving the state pension that could also affect you?

JB: Oh the pension is a lifeline for many, many people. You know people you are at the bottom end of the financial scale look forward to getting their pension, it makes a great difference in their lives including modest perks like the fuel allowance and the free bus pass and these all add up to extremely important advantages to people who deserve it and who haven’t got other resources, they may not even own their own house. So I mean of course these kind of changes hit people who perhaps least deserve it.

Jermey Paxman: What do you make of this pay freeze?

Teresa May: Well some of the details have been announced tonight, I haven’t seen all of the details. I have to say that I think first of all it shows that we are continuing to set the agenda. We’ve been talking for some time now about the need to address the deficit and suddenly lo and behold the government appears to be starting to look at that but in this rather sort of behind the scenes way. As you were saying earlier Jeremy, they had their own conference last week, why didn’t they announce it then?

JP: Perhaps they forgot or something?

TM: Forget about the4 pay freeze for thousands of civil servants, I think not.

JP: Let’s get a straight answer, do you support it or not?

TM: What I have said to you Jeremy is we need to look at all the details of it, but what you are going to be seeing ..

JP: Are you not supporting it?

TM: .. what you will be seeing tomorrow fro George Osborne is that he’ll be setting out an overall approach to how we deal with the deficit, not a sort of piecemeal do you look at this issue or this aspect or that aspect, but our overall approach to dealing with the deficit. We are the party that has been talking about the need to do that and we are going to do that in a proper fashion and not like the way that the government has just with this sort of Treasury briefing announcement coming out in the middle of our conference.

JP: Let’s look at pensions, do you propose to raise the age at which people .. or bring forward the rise in the age at which you can get the pension, now is that going to apply to men and women equally?

TM: Well the change in the state pension age is part of the process of actually equalising the state pension age between men and women. This is … the change to 66 in 2026 and then 68 in 2046 came out of the Turner review. What we are saying is that we would have a further review but with the view to bringing forward that first point at which the state pension age starts to rise. I think most people recognise with people living longer actually we have to look again at the point at which people go .. start to earn their state pension.

JP: But this is a key thing, you propose to bring forward the age at which you get your pension at 66 from the year 2026 to 2016, but the pensions between men and women are only going to be equalised in 2020, aren’t they?

TM: As ..the .. there are two timetables operating, yes. What the review will be doing will be looking at the appropriate timetable for that state pensions age to be ..

JP: So you haven’t decided yet?

TM: Well the announcement is that we will actually have a review which will look at that timetable with a view to raising the state pension age at an earlier point than 2026.

JP: For both men and women?

TM: For .. the state pension age will be applicable when it .. the point of 2026 was coming in for both men and women. So the review will be looking at what should happen to the state pension age for men and the state pension age for women and at what point should it ..

JP: At 2016?

TM: ..and what point should it raise to 66.

JP: Because this would apply to anyone who is currently in their fifties wouldn’t it? It would mean they would have to work a year longer/

TM: I’m afraid there are some tough choices to be made and if we look, as you know yourself, at the aging population that we have in the country, we have to look at what point it is appropriate for people to be receiving their state pension. People .. when the state .. if you think back, when the state pension was first introduced in fact the average age at which men and women lived to was actually significantly less than the point at which the pension was payable so very few people actually got it.

JP: But the consequence of this will be, will it not, that those people who rely upon the state pension, i.e. the poorest members of society, will be disproportionately hit?

TM: It means that ..

JP: That must be true?

TM: Everybody qualifies for the state .. the basic state pension and it means that people will be ..

JP: Those most dependent on it are the poorest, aren’t they?

TM: .. it means that people will be having to work at the point at which the age is r … the age at which you reach your state pension age rises. It means that people will be in the workplace for a year longer than they have to be at the moment in order to qualify for it. But these are exactly the sort of decisions Jeremy ..

JP: I’m right, aren’t I?

TM: .. these are exactly the sort of decision that have to be taken by governments looking at how …

JP: No one denies difficult decision have to be taken, but since you have already conceded effectively that this will hit the poorest people most severely, aren’t we back to the days of you being the nasty party?

TM: No, no we’re not and one of the other things that we’re committed to in relation to pensions is to restore the link between earnings and sate pensions, which many people have been calling for for some considerable time.

JP: Do you think when you look at this there is a case for reducing public sector pensions?

TM: The disparity between public sector pensions and private sector pensions is something that cannot be ignored, certainly, and I think it is an issue that we have to look at. If we are going to look at public sector pensions we would obviously be guaranteeing the accrued benefits would be protected but that’s not something ..

JP: There is no ‘if’ about it, you are going to look at it?

TM: That’s not something that one can deal with in opposition, and one of the first things that we would do in looking at public sector pensions is actually deal with the question of what are the figures around public sector pensions, there are lots of estimates out there about the cost of public sector pensions, we would ask our Office of Budget Responsibility – which we are setting up for other purposes primarily – but we would ask it first of all to conduct an audit of public sector pension so we can be looking at this issue on the basis of some firm evidence.

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?

The Birmingham international comics show was not only great because we were introduced to Morris the mankiest monster. In between my four year old hiding from Imperial Storm Troopers, I also got to see the creators of some of the most avant garde comic strips. Handknit Heroes has to be the most out there. You get action super-hero adventure, in handknits. At the back you get a knitting pattern. Issue one gives you this entry level scarf, to kick-start your super-hero knitting career.

A number of non-profit online services face closure today, after Royal Mail sent a cease and desist letter to free post code campaigners. The services affected include Job Centre Pro Plus, which allows you to find jobs near you. Royal Mail is currently looking to slim its workforce of 121,000 postal workers.

Royal Mail today sent a ‘cease and desist’ letter to Ernest Marples Ltd, the organisation providing a post code API allowing social projects to use post code searches.

Jim Killock, Executive Director of the Open Rights Group (of which I’m an Advisory Council member) said:

“It’s outrageous that Royal Mail should be sacking workers and at the same time trying to close a service that might help them find work.

“Post codes were created with public money, so they need to be used for the widest public benefit. Ernest Marples have been showing how this can be done. Their ideas need to be legalised for non-profit use, not shut down.

“Intellectual Property rules need to work for society, and not the other way round.

“An amicable solution to allow non-commercial use of post code data would be easy to create, via a key given only to non-profit organisations. Clearly, something that allows greater use of post codes is needed right now.

“Better access to information means more social and democratic benefits.”

Other services facing closure include Planning Alerts, which finds planning applications near your post code, and The Straight Choice (unfortunate name), detailing election leaflets and their claims by post code.

These services are free to UK citizens and they make their lives easier, yet because of the rigidity of Royal Mail, they’re going to closed down. It’s silly. And yet another example of how a big institution fails the innovation test when it comes to the Internet. Tom and I would agree on this point, I’m sure.

The campaigners behind Ernest Marples are programmers Richard Pope and Harry Metcalfe. Harry is also a member of ORG’s board. He is taking no part in ORG’s campaigning on this issue.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of Tom Steinberg and MySociety. I’m also a fan of the agenda that some in the Tories are pushing with regard to transparency, in particular, transparent budgeting.

But if it it true that William Hague is going to announce the appointment of Tom as a Tory adviser on Internet matters at their conference, then I think it is incompatible with his position as boss of MySociety.

Why? Well, ask yourself what you would have thought if David Miliband had announced Tom as an adviser to the Labour Party last week? There’d have been uproar. To allow yourself to become part of the electoral positioning between the two parties, is at best naive. And to announce his appointment at the Conservative Party conference, is about as partisan as it gets.

MySociety has built a great deal of trust with parliamentarians on all both sides of the House over the last few years. It wasn’t easy. They’re a non-partisan organisation who rightly, take a dig at all sides when required. Yet, despite Tom’s hastily published explanation on his blog tonight, the manner of his appointment will leave an air of mistrust between him and supporters of MySociety who are not Conservatives. That’s a very great shame for him, but more importantly, for MySociety.

I’ve spent a lovely afternoon making monsters with my son and Sarah McIntyre, the illustrator of the most revolting monster book I’ve ever read. It was great fun.

Morris the Mankiest Monster has ear wax like hot cheese as well as pustules, boils and rotting toe nails. In short, he’s adorable. My son already loves the book. Thank you Sarah for being so fun.

David Cameron writes in today’s News of the World. Again, no message on climate change.

I’d love to see the translation of this story mentioning Mr Cameron in French Newspaper, Le Figaro.

Latest war of words over at the increasingly important BBC Internet Blog.

“Today, I will give this cast-iron guarantee: If I become PM, a Conservative government will hold a referendum on any EU treaty that emerges from these negotiations.”

AND THEN,

“I want to make one thing clear: there will be no change in our policy on Europe and no new announcements at the Conference. There will be no change in Conservative policy as long as the Lisbon Treaty is still not in force. The Treaty has still not been ratified by the Czechs and the Poles. The Czech Prime Minister has said that the constitutional challenge before the Czech Constitutional Court could take 3-6 months to resolve. I have said repeatedly that I want us to have a referendum. If the Treaty is not ratified in all Member States and not in force when the election is held, and if we are elected, then we will hold a referendum on it, we will name the date of the referendum in the election campaign, we will lead the campaign for a ‘No’ vote. If the Treaty is ratified and in force in all Member States, we have repeatedly said we would not let matters rest there. But we have one policy at a time, and we will set out how we would proceed in those circumstances if, and only if, they happen.”

Sunday update: The Observer reports Boris Johnson calling for a referendum early in the first term of any Conservative government. Conservative MP Richard Shepherd calls it a matter of “trust”.

This is an extract from today’s Sun newspaper. I think it’s important that everyone reads it regardless of political affiliation. See David Cameron’s 10 point plan for Britain:

UPDATE:

1. See Financial Times for their take on the 10 point plan.

2. Liberal Conspiracy on Cameron’s typical family.