A third of British seniors are liv­ing in poverty accord­ing to new sta­tis­tics. The Euro­pean Com­mis­sion says that 30 per­cent of UK pen­sion­ers are liv­ing below the poverty line, the fourth high­est rate in all of Europe.

Advo­cates for the poor are urg­ing for imme­di­ate action to tackle the problem.

From the Pock­ling­ton Post, we read more of the stats and the reaction.

Age Con­cern and Help the Aged called for min­is­ters to act through mea­sures such as reform­ing the ben­e­fits and pen­sion sys­tem.

The fig­ures come ahead of the Work and Pen­sion Committee’s review of Gov­ern­ment efforts to tackle pen­sioner poverty, which is pub­lished on Thursday.

The EU research, which com­pared rel­a­tive poverty in the 27 mem­ber states, showed nearly one in three UK over-65s were at risk of poverty in 2007, the same pro­por­tion as in Lithua­nia (30%).

It revealed that in most lead­ing Euro­pean economies, pen­sioner poverty lev­els were either below or slightly above the EU aver­age of 19%.

While the UK fared bet­ter than the 51% in Cyprus (51%), Latvia (33%), and Esto­nia (33%), the fig­ures show British pen­sion­ers are worse off than Roma­nia, where 19% fell below the poverty thresh­old, Poland (8%) and France (13%). Pen­sion­ers in the Czech Repub­lic are least likely to be liv­ing in poverty, with 5% below the thresh­old of an income of 60% of the national median, accord­ing to the figures.

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