Charity chief warns of lost referendum year

Age Scotland Chief Executive Brian Sloan today called on Scotland's parties to make sure pressing issues for older people are not neglected in the run up to the referendum.  The call came as the Charity launched the 2013 edition of Mind the Gap, its annual report assessing Government's performance on the big issues for later life.

Speaking at the ‘Scotland 2020: Realising the opportunities of an ageing population' conference in Edinburgh he said: "We fought very hard to get a powerful devolved Scottish Parliament and Government, and its powers are increasing via the second Scotland Act. Demographic change and fiscal consolidation are going to be increasing factors, and we need to ensure we are using the time we have now to address the people's business.

"If, one year from now, we have invested all our time and energy in the referendum debate and it hasn't done anything to tackle discrimination or injustice, it will be not only an opportunity missed but will store up more problems for us, whichever constitutional architecture will have responsibility for it."

The Mind the Gap report finds that there has been progress on some issues since the 2012 edition, including older people feeling safer out-doors after dark, and more of them participating in sport.  However absolute pensioner poverty remains static at 16% and fuel poverty among single pensioner households has increased from 55% to 56%.  

The picture with regard to health and social care is mixed, with patient satisfaction with the NHS broadly unchanged, however an increase in the number of patients whose discharge from hospital was delayed by more than 6 weeks.

Brian Sloan said: "Given the scale of the challenge posed by a rapidly ageing population, and the comparatively low baseline in some areas such as healthy life expectancy, progress overall is far too slow."

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