OVER the past few months, there has been quite a few anxieties raised on this Letters page about the closure of council-owned homes, the need for better financial support in the private sector, and government policy on means-tested benefits.

Now the latest definition of government policy on how to look after the elderly is linked to a very attractive individual stakeholder pension plan.

First of all to qualify, the pensioner must be in the Government: someone like the lucky Lord Irvine.

After six years as Lord Chancellor, his £2.6 million pension fund package is safe and secure. He has now retired on an index-linked income of more than £100,000 a year for life, with a handy tax-free lump sum of £180,000.

Irvine's former pupil Tony Blair has looked after his old mentor very well by allowing £2 million from public funds to be stuffed into a big pension fund.

On top of all this, he will also be allowed to carry on sitting in the House of Lords at the going rate of £250 per day for "incidental expenses". No doubt all this will assist the noble Lord to advance the cause of "the socialist movement" which, of late, he said he was "still very proud to be a member of".

Gordon Brown, on the other hand, is working flat out on the "New Deal", whatever that is. He is trying to stop anyone else building a large pension fund, and Labour MPs cheered him to the rafters when he announced an extra levy on the private pension funds of working people.

Still it doesn't even stop there; Members of Parliament have cheekily improved their own pension arrangements while at the same time arrogantly telling others that they may have to keep on working until they reach 70 or more. This is because Britain, the world's fourth largest economy, can't afford to support those who have worked and contributed to that prosperity.

JEAN ALLISON