10M over 50s face cost crisis

AS PRICES SOAR.. 5.7m have just £1,500 savings

NEARLY 10 million older people do not have enough savings to stave off the cost of living crisis that threatens them in 2022.

A Labour analysis of official figures shows four in 10 over-50s have less than £3,000 put aside for a rainy day.

Of those, 5.7 million have only £1,500 – and 2.2 million nothing at all.

Yet they are about to be hit with a fourfold whammy of higher energy bills, rising shop prices, the loss of the pension triple lock and 1.3 million working OAPS paying national insurance for the first time.

Retired footwear manager Elaine Yates, 72, of Northampton, is worried what little she has set aside will now be wiped out by rising prices.

The full-time carer for husband Michael, 76, said: “We don’t have debts. We don’t have holidays. I don’t even have a credit card.

“My big fear is how we will fork out for unexpected repairs with the cost of living going through the roof. We feel abandoned. When it comes to this Government, we’re second class citizens.”

Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Jonathan Ashworth – who writes in today’s Sunday People to slam the impact 11 years of Tory misrule have had upon the elderly – said: “Two million pensioners are in poverty. And millions of older people have been left with little or no savings to help weather these coming storms.”

More than half of 50 to 54-year-olds fall below the £3,000 savings threshold. And some 2.5 million in their 50s have less than half that to fall back on. Meanwhile, one in three over-85s have less than £3,000 – and nearly 100,000 nothing.

Labour is calling for the immediate scrapping of VAT on domestic energy bills for six months to help.

Caroline Abrahams of Age UK said: “This is a scary time to be a pensioner with few, if any, savings to fall back on.

“Many older people dread the prospect of a cooker or boiler going wrong because they’d struggle to replace it.”