Scottish pensioners are “better protected” while Scotland shares “risks and resources” with the rest of the UK, Gordon Brown will claim later today.
In a speech at Glasgow University for Better Together, which opposes Scottish independence, the former prime minister is to warn that an independent Scotland would face a pensions time bomb, with an annual bill in the first year of separation estimated at three times the income from North Sea oil.
He will say Scots have paid UK National Insurance “all our lives” and it is “right” that the UK bears the costs.
The SNP believes pensions would be “more affordable” in Scotland than UK-wide.
Brown will say: “The whole point of sharing risks and resources across the UK is that it is right and proper that the British welfare state bears the rising cost of Scottish pensions as the number of old people will rise from one million to 1.3 million.”
Brown is also expected to cite previously unpublished Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) figures and estimates, which show:
Scotland pays 8% of UK National Insurance but receives “upwards of 9%” of the benefits
- the “extra benefit” Scotland receives in terms of pensions (the gap between contributions and returns) will rise from £425m to £700m per year over the next 20 years
- the UK will “underwrite” Scotland’s estimated £100bn public sector pensions bill. He will say this is 10% of the UK total – while Scotland has just 8% of the UK population
- it would cost about £1bn for Scotland to administer the first years of a separate pensions and benefits system once IT costs were included – which Brown will say “makes no sense”
Brown will add it is “fairer and better” for the UK’s “faster-rising” working-age population to cover the cost of the rising number of elderly people in Scotland.
“We have contributed in UK National Insurance all our lives to spread the risks of poverty in retirement,” he will add.
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