Government abandoning pensioners to shorter lives

12.00.00am UTC (GMT +0000) Wed 16th Jul 2008

Commenting on today's [Wednesday] report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies which reveals that the poorest older people are more than twice as likely to die at any given age than the richest, Liberal Democrat Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, Jenny Willott said:

"These are shocking figures. This report shows how crucial it is that the Government starts to take pensioner poverty seriously.

"By allowing almost 3m pensioners to remain in poverty, ministers are abandoning people to shorter, more isolated lives.

"Labour used to be the champions of the poor, but with spiralling costs of living and increasing inequality, life is only getting worse for them."