Over-60s free travel costs taxpayers three times as much as fare dodgers
Providing free transport for over-60s in London is costing taxpayers £500m a year, prompting calls for the benefit to be scrapped.
A rapidly ageing population means more than 1.5 million people now travel for free across London's buses, Tubes, trains and trams.
They do so via the 60+ Oyster Card, for those aged between 60 and 65, and the Freedom Pass, available to those aged 66 and older.
Telegraph analysis shows the 60+ Oyster Card alone will cost Transport for London (TfL) £135m this year, up from £60m in 2016. By 2027, costs are expected to reach £185m.
The Freedom Pass, which now has more than 900,000 users, costs £350m a year – a bill that is forecast to reach £498m by the end of the decade.
By comparison, traditional fare dodgers – such as those recently exposed by Tory MP Robert Jenrick for skipping barriers at Underground stations – cost the organisation £130m a year.
According to TfL, the majority of 60+ Oyster card holders (60pc) are still in paid employment, and one in five use the free travel to get to and from work.
This is despite the fact that those aged 60 and 64 earn an average salary of £42,000, double that of those aged between 20 and 24 at £24,000.
Reem Ibrahim, of the Institute of Economic Affairs, said: 'It is difficult to justify a system where the wealthiest age group in the country is having their travel funded by taxpayers.
'The 60+ Oyster card and Freedom Pass schemes are financially unsustainable, and are not targeted to those genuinely in need of support. We urgently need a more targeted approach, rather than entrenching an unfair and costly system.'
Liz Emerson, chief executive of the Intergenerational Foundation, a research charity, said: 'At the very least, the Freedom Pass should be aligned with the state pension age.
'It's a perfect example of intergenerational unfairness at work with younger workers having to subsidise their older colleagues free travel to work.'
The 60+ Oyster Card was first introduced by then Mayor of London, Boris Johnson in 2012.
It is funded by Sir Sadiq Khan's mayoral precept in council tax bills and the congestion charge – the daily fee for driving into central London.
Once Londoners reach the age of 66, they continue to receive free travel in the form of a Freedom Pass, which is also provided to eligible disabled people regardless of age. This £350m bill is shouldered on to London's 33 boroughs – 28 of which increased council tax by the legal maximum of 5pc in April.
The body that runs the scheme on behalf of the boroughs, has warned it will cost taxpayers £498m by 2029-30, a figure it described as 'unsustainable'.
Sir Sadiq, 54, who is five years away from qualifying for free travel himself, banned the use of 60+ Oyster cards and the Freedom Pass before 9am during the pandemic. The move generated an extra £15m in fares.
However, he rejected plans to increase the qualifying age for the 60+ Oyster card by six months a year for the next 12 years, allowing for it to be slowly phased out until it matched the qualifying age of the Freedom Pass.
A spokesman for Transport for London said: 'Both the Mayor and TfL are committed to making public transport in London as accessible, convenient, and affordable as possible.
'We regularly review our range of concessions to ensure that they continue to benefit Londoners, while also remaining affordable for TfL to operate.'
Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Forbes
an hour ago
- Forbes
As Pension Funds Buy Bitcoin, A New Path In Its History Is Traced
We've seen waves of big institutional players adopt Bitcoin - even traditionally conservative players. The talk of the town has been nation-state adoption of Bitcoin, from El Salvador's experiment with Bitcoin as legal tender to recent actions in the United States with the new Administration. Yet pension funds are inching in as well. A reflection of this has been the small but growing number of pension funds that are adopting Bitcoin - a unique phenomenon that marks a unique path in Bitcoin's evolution that has remained understudied - for the moment. The state of Wisconsin's pension fund has adopted Bitcoin through investment in spot Bitcoin ETFs. An unnamed UK pension scheme has made a 3% allocation to Bitcoin working with Cartwright. The State of Michigan Retirement System has made a multi-million dollar investment in Bitcoin ETFs. And while it's small steps at the beginning, as more institutions gather Bitcoin, this is a promising path forward for adoption. Much of the background research and points come out of a conversation with two sources who have vast experience with pension fund adoption - Sam Roberts of Cartwright, which has advised a UK-based pension fund to allocate 3% towards Bitcoin, and Dom Bei of Proof of Workforce which has helped various unions save holdings in Bitcoin. Pension funds aren't just a new player - they are a different type of player - marking a new evolution for Bitcoin as it matures into the gold standard for digital money. For players in the space, especially pension funds, lasting time horizons are essential. They can't just pull their funds out willy-nilly - they need to be invested in something for at least ten years - and sometimes longer. Pension funds see a difference between Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies - a bias that will persist in both legal systems, in the eyes of nation-states, and institutional players with very long time horizons - such as sovereign wealth funds. Pension funds see Bitcoin as the only option in a crowded field - with other cryptocurrencies going extinct fast compared to Bitcoin. When pension funds evaluate Bitcoin, they must remember that it's like any other asset out there - and that its risk/reward profile stands out to carry the day. As Sam from Cartwright points out, the trick is to get pension trustees to look beyond the polarizing debate and simply counsel to evaluate Bitcoin on its merits and the numbers. If you already believe in the staying power of Bitcoin, then once you take a look at the numbers, Bitcoin stands out as the best-performing financial asset of the last decade. Once you anchor to the math and escape the narrative, Bitcoin paradoxically looks better to institutional players like pension funds. Right now, the winning formula for convincing pension funds is starting (and ending) with Bitcoin in a small percent of their allocation - say in the low single digits towards 1-3%. This smaller allocation allows pension funds not to worry about the short-term volatility of Bitcoin and look more towards the long-term horizon. Even a small allocation can produce outsize returns - enough to justify dipping in. This line of reasoning was part of the reason how Cartwright got a UK pension scheme to allocate 3% to Bitcoin. While most pensions are interested in Bitcoin as a store of value (echoing what's happening in cities and states around the world that want to hold Bitcoin on their reserves), small steps are being taken to explore Bitcoin's use as a medium of exchange - for example, payroll services. While store of value is the more obvious case to push forward, it's clear that there's room for pension funds to experiment with Bitcoin beyond just holding it on their balance sheets - with experiments towards Bitcoin salaries among top Bitcoin companies. It's not just regular pension funds - but also pension funds for blue-collar workers that are looking in. There is a broad appeal to saving beyond just general pension funds. Dom Bei has, for example, onboarded several firefighter unions to start investing in Bitcoin. This is a critical step forward even though it's one thing to get a pension fund in and another to get a union. As he puts it: 'Bitcoin adoption among U.S. pension funds remains low, with few holding it, while unions across public and private sectors increasingly add Bitcoin to their balance sheets. Despite their structural differences, unions and pension funds share a core ethos: advocating for workers' present and future. Both should approach Bitcoin similarly—minimizing risk while learning about a tool born from a financial crisis that devastated workers. As a top 10 global asset by market cap, Bitcoin demands exploration by fund managers and union leaders as a network, financial tool, and store of value for wage-earners.' --- Pension funds are traditionally seen as arch-conservative in their investment choices. The fact that a few are dipping their toes into Bitcoin (and Bitcoin only) is worth examining - tracing a new path for Bitcoin as it continues to march ahead of its crypto competitors.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
‘Lack of liquidity' the key factor in decline of the LSE
A lack of liquidity due to a relatively low appetite for investment in the UK is the main factor behind the decline of the London Stock Exchange (LSE), according to a commercial growth expert. Speaking on an episode of GlobalData's Instant Insights podcast, Carrie Osman, founder and CEO of growth consultancy Cruxy, suggested there are a range of factors behind companies choosing to list elsewhere or delisting, including some structural, but that, in her view, liquidity is the main issue. 'It doesn't have the liquidity, it doesn't have the buoyancy, and it doesn't, quite frankly, attract the most innovative technologies to list in London because of the fact that there doesn't seem to be the appetite from an investment pool to provide the liquidity that obviously some of these founders or private equity firms are looking for,' Osman said. 'Ultimately, you're looking for people to back your concept or idea, and you're looking for them to believe in that with their money to buy shares in your company and say, 'Yes, I believe that you're going to make me a lot of money. Let's go long here.' I was looking at some facts, and I thought it's very interesting that, for example, in the UK, about 23% of adults have stocks and shares. When we compare that to the US, it's 62%.' Osman was speaking following the announcement that Qualcomm has acquired UK-based semiconductor company Alphawave Semi, resulting in another high-profile departure from the LSE. She pointed to that deal as just one example of the challenges facing the LSE but noted that it wasn't just the UK exchange facing such issues. 'When you look at Europe as a whole, I think [there are] 183 European listings, and only about 15% of those are listed in their home turf,' she said. 'So, I think it probably is kind of far and wide when you look at Europe as a whole.' Osman believes the lesser culture for investing in the UK compared to the US – where individuals are exposed to investing through the 401(k) retirement savings plan – is limiting the potential of the LSE. 'How could you encourage people to kind of play an active role in the market?' she said. 'Maybe teach them about the market, teach them about stocks, teach them about trading. And then, of course, maybe there are ways that we could use tax incentives to encourage either companies or, of course, employees to be able to feel like they can invest in the markets without feeling like it's so much of a risk.' 'It always feels like it's less of a risk to just stick your money in an ISA and fingers crossed the Bank of England doesn't reduce the rate too much. That was how I was brought up. I think it would be amazing to think that there's a way to encourage more slight risk taking but with a bit of a support layer there so that people feel they can invest in our country and invest in some of our great assets.' Osman also pointed to the Private Intermittent Securities and Capital Exchange System (PISCES) as a means of encouraging investment. Per the UK's Financial Conduct Authority, 'PISCES is a new type of private stock market that will give investors more opportunities to buy stakes in growing companies.' 'If I own shares in a company, I can trade those shares without listing it publicly, so that there'll be these kind of trading windows,' Osman explained. 'So, I can trade those shares, and an asset manager can buy them all. But the thing that concerns me about that is that it's only secondaries, so it's only certain people they decide can do that, who are professional investors, whatever that means. 'And who decides the price? Is this just regulation? All the positive consequences, but it ends up with a lot of regulation on regulation, and it ends up with a lot of complexity? I'm worried that that could end up being a lot of positive intent, but maybe it doesn't lead to that outcome of driving liquidity that they would hope.' "'Lack of liquidity' the key factor in decline of the LSE" was originally created and published by Investment Monitor, a GlobalData owned brand. The information on this site has been included in good faith for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely, and we give no representation, warranty or guarantee, whether express or implied as to its accuracy or completeness. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our site.
Medscape
2 hours ago
- Medscape
RCGP Urges Support to Save Declining GP Partnership Model
The Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) has warned that GP partnerships are under threat, as the number of partners in England has dropped by 25% over the past decade. In a new report, the college urged action to 'break down barriers to partnership' and called for modernisation of the model to make it more attractive to younger doctors. While the RCGP reaffirmed its support for the independent contractor model, it said there was 'room for modernisation and innovation', and backed ' a mixed economy' of contractual models to deliver general practice. Shift in Workforce Between 2015 and 2025, the number of GP partners in England fell from 24,491 to 18,367. Over the same period, the number of salaried GPs rose by 81%, from 10,270 in September 2015 to 18,557 in December 2024. As of June 2024, GP partners were a minority among fully qualified GPs for the first time. The most significant drop in partnership was seen in younger doctors. Among GPs aged 30-34, numbers fell by 72.9%. The only age group to show growth was those aged 60-64, up by 19.5%. Barriers to Partnership Rising workload, administrative burdens, and concerns about financial risk were cited as major deterrents to partnership. Professor Kamila Hawthorne, RCGP chair, said that many GPs were discouraged by the unlimited personal liability that comes with being a partner. She also pointed to the responsibilities of owning or leasing premises and managing staff, especially as patient demand increases. Exploring Alternatives The RCGP report explored alternative business models that could support general practice, including limited companies, limited liability partnerships (LLPs), and community benefit societies. The college maintained that partnerships still offered flexibility and potential for innovation, particularly if financial and workload pressures could be reduced. In 2024, more than half (55%) of RCGP members said they would be more likely to consider partnership if financial risks were lower. A review by Lord Darzi highlighted the financial discipline of GP partnerships, noting that they could not run large deficits like other parts of the NHS. Earlier this year, the Nuffield Trust described the current GP partnership model as 'withering'. The health think tank warned that the government's plans to improve GP access were at risk due to the fall in partner numbers. Thea Stein, chief executive of the Nuffield Trust, told Medscape News UK : 'It is hard to see partnership being the dominant model in the future.' She called for support where the model works well, but said new models must also be explored. Hawthorne maintained that 'there are elements of the traditional GP partnership that can be improved and modernised, while retaining its core strengths'. The GP partnership model has huge benefits for the NHS and for patients, she added. Government Response A Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) spokesperson acknowledged the strengths of the partnership model, including efficiency, innovation, and continuity of care. 'However, we also recognise that this is not the only model delivering general practice,' the spokesperson told Medscape News UK . 'GP practices can choose to organise themselves in different ways and also provide good outcomes in terms of staff engagement and patient experience.'
