THE major issue missing from much electoral discourse is pensions. When you discover there are already 150,000 pensioners living in poverty in Scotland, it seems like a pretty major issue that needs to be addressed.

This is a shocking statistic and is even more worrying given how badly hit our elderly community has been during this global pandemic. Many were already struggling with issues of isolation and loneliness even before lockdown, as well as finding it difficult to pay for food and energy bills.

Now a new study from Standard Life Aberdeen (or Abrdn as it seems we must learn to call and say it) has shown that 66% of Scots planning to retire this year risk having insufficient pension savings. The same study reveals that people about to retire will be living on pensions that fall around £10,000 below the average UK household income of £29,900. On top of this, almost one-third of people who are not far off retirement age have accelerated their plans as a direct result of the pandemic due to concerns related to lockdowns, health and employment.

Indeed older workers are the second most impacted group to suffer from redundancy during the Covid crisis, and those who are struggling economically may well also struggle to get another job due to their age, despite all their experience and qualifications for work.

It would seem the odds are stacked against the older sections of society. It’s even worse for females in this age group with the majority of women retirees having a whopping 40% less pension wealth than men.

This is further exacerbated by a host of other factors that prevent them from saving adequately for retirement, such as caring responsibilities or time out of employment due to children, not to mention the continuing gender pay gap. A study conducted by Project Pensions discovered that it is the north of Scotland where the gender pension gap is at its widest – men’s pension pots are almost 50% bigger than women’s!

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Add to this the plight of the Waspi women, where people born in the 1950s have been denied their rightful pension age by the Tory government, which raised the age of retirement for women to the same as men. No-one has an issue with equalisation of retirement age, but this poor legislation was passed with no proper notification process, even though the Turner Commission and Saga recommended between 15 and 10 years’s notice respectively.

Some women in this age group received no notice whatsoever, while others received just one year’s warning of a six-year increase to their retirement age, leaving little or no time to accommodate this major shift.

Any woman over child-bearing age will tell you how difficult it is to find a job, let alone stay in one should there be changes to personnel and redundancy. Waspi women were left out in the cold, and these brave women I was proud to campaign with during my time as an MP.

As a Waspi spokesperson pointed out: “The traditional caring role for women born in the 1950s, the often part time or irregular work patterns, lower pay, and the need to provide care for elderly parents has had a huge impact on their ability to build an adequate pension pot.”

We should be supporting these women, recognising their contribution to society, their sacrifice, their sense of duty and their invaluable caring roles, not penalising them as they approach the end of their working lives.

Of course, arch-Tory Iain Duncan Smith has even suggested raising the pension age to 75 in the future. This is an inhumane idea, which islacking in empathy and understanding of the complex lives people lead. At least those who don’t have a silver-spooned safety net, shares in family companies or savings in the form of tax avoiding bank accounts overseas. Get real. Not on our watch.

I’m proud that the Alba Party has put retired workers at the heart of our manifesto for Scotland. Alba will campaign to ensure the Tories don’t get the chance to push the pension age past 66 and we’ll keep on fighting for the Waspi women who have been so badly treated.

Alba regard pensions as a sacred contract between the current generation and past ones, and we see it as the duty of the state and society to ensure that our older people are taken care of to the best of our ability. After all, and something younger generations need reminded of on occasion, older people have made the Scotland we live in right now – they have worked hard, paid tax, campaigned for better rights, pushed for equality and fairness, and created opportunities for us all to enjoy.

Ultimately, we need all the major levers of control to ensure that we can meet our pledge as champions of Scottish pensioners. In the meantime, while pensions remain reserved to Westminster, we need to use all the strength we currently have to fight back against the callous and unfair Tory pension policies, push for more control and set up a Scottish Pensions Commission to review and assess the current situation to inform a more sensitive approach to our nations’ pension needs.

All roads lead back to independence as far as Alba are concerned. As we journey towards our rightful destination, let’s shake things up for pensioners and all of the people of Scotland. And remember Alba is rising.