- Conference
- 2025 National Retired Members Conference
- Date
- 4 June 2025
- Decision
- Carried
National Retired Members’ Conference notes with grave concern that while poverty and insecurity threaten the health, wellbeing and lives of millions of pensioners, the government is spending increased billions of Pounds on putting the country on a war footing and is proposing to increase its annual military outlay even further.
According to the Centre for Aging Better this year, almost one in five pensioners are living in poverty, with one in ten experiencing material deprivation, defined as being unable to afford the very basics of life.
A 2025 report by Age UK noted that for many pensioners already on fixed and low incomes, some of the most vulnerable in society, the situation is dire. To take just one example, the report found that 48% of older people with disabilities had to cut back on heating and/or powering their homes, impinging directly on their health and safety.
Meanwhile, the cost of upgrading and maintaining the UK’s nuclear deterrent is running at hundreds of billions of Pounds, a single Trident 2 missile costs 30 million Pounds, while even the cost of keeping an F35-A bomber in the air for an hour is over £33,000.
Conference deplores the scale of spending on war and armaments and calls upon the National Retired Members’ Committee to work with the NEC and all relevant bodies to:
1. Expose the myth that there is no money to pay for pensioners’ needs
2. Lobby the government to commit to the eradication of pensioner poverty within the life of the current parliament using funding diverted from the war budget
3. To promote the prioritisation of “welfare not warfare” in every aspect of campaigning, beginning with the restoration of the Winter Fuel Allowance, the payment of compensation to WASPI women and an increase in state pension allowing all retired people to have a decent standard of life, together with full access to the restored public services on which they depend