Commenting on the Chancellor’s Pre-Budget Report, Andrew Harrop, Head of Public Policy at Age Concern and Help the Aged, said:

'While protecting the NHS budget from the axe, the Government has left the care sector in the dark about its future funding, just a few days after a regulator raised serious concerns about the quality of care provided to older people. With huge public spending cuts now likely outside the NHS, schools and policing, people reliant on care services can only fear the worst. To prevent care services from getting any worse and lives being placed at risk, the Chancellor’s commitment to protect health spending must be extended to social care as well as the NHS. Spending from the health budget should be re-prioritised to provide additional funding for the care system. Ministers have said that addressing the crisis in the care system is one of their top priorities, but the Chancellor has failed to match this rhetoric with a commitment on funding.

'The additional support announced to help unemployed older workers is a sign that their plight has finally come to the Government’s attention. Yet this falls short of providing the guarantees needed for the increasing numbers of over-50s in long-term unemployment. The Government needs to take more vigorous action if it wants to avoid creating a ‘lost generation’ of older workers shut out of the job market and forced into premature retirement.

'Many older people will be relieved that the Basic State Pension and Pension Credit will both increase above planned indexation. Yet the Government has missed a golden opportunity to promise to restore the link between Basic State Pension and earnings by 2012. Sliding beyond this date will plunge an additional 70,000 pensioners into poverty, saving relatively little for the Government – an estimated £250 million a year after 2012.

'We warmly welcome the announced increase to the Warm Front budget which will help thousands of older people improve the energy efficiency of their houses and cut energy bills. Older people will now look to the Government’s Energy Bill to introduce a new system of mandatory social tariffs which could lift many older households out of fuel poverty.'