Letter: Penalising the pensioners who suffer in silence

SIR – It is not fair that some pensioners are treated like second-class citizens.

Being denied roughly £200 per week of new state pension because of a snafu in 2020. In the new state pension, men born before 6th April 1951 and women born before 6th April 1953 are to be denied with a difference of some £2,477.80 per year between the full basic and full new state pensions.

That is the battle-scarred generation born before the late Queen’s coronation.

Born before or in the early days of the NHS (1948). They or their families have been liable to conscription before 1962, not only in the forces but Women’s Land Army or Bevin’s Boys Miners.

They did their bit whilst suffering in their early years under heavy rationing of food, clothes, coal for heating. They stayed calm and carried on, not only in World War Two but in the many later wars.

Brought up “Never to Explain or Complain”, they are expected to suffer in silence the humiliation, starvation and deprivation which this two-tier pension scheme causes.

Whatever the national insurance contributions an individual made was that requested by the government. They caused this snafu, and they have the responsibility and means to cancel it.

Mr Lomas,
Milford-on-Sea