Providing free transport for over-60s in London is costing taxpayers £500m a year, prompting calls for the benefit to be scrapped.
Providing free transport for over-60s in London is costing taxpayers £500m a year, prompting calls for the benefit to be scrapped.
Over-60s could have a key perk scrapped with demands for the Labour Party government to scrap free bus passes. Providing free transport for over-60s in London is costing taxpayers £500m a year, prompting calls for the benefit to be scrapped.
The perk is handed to 1.5 million people who can 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.
The 60+ Oyster Card alone will cost Transport for London (TfL) £135m this year, up from £60m in 2016. The Freedom Pass, which now has more than 900,000 users, costs £350m a year.
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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.”
TfL figures show that 60 per cent of people with a 50+ Oyster card are still in paid employment and one in five use the bus pass to get to or from work.
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.”