3M OAPs will die before plan to act on poverty; BROWN WARNED.

Byline: By BOB ROBERTS, Deputy Political Editor

THREE million OAPs will die before the Government gives them a big enough pension to live on, a pressure group warned yesterday.

Chancellor Gordon Brown is to bring back the link between pensions and earnings - abolished by the Tories in 1980 - but not until 2012.

The National Pensioners Campaign, which yesterday staged a 1,000 strong protest march on Parliament, said half a million pensioners are dying each year and action was needed now.

Joe Harris, general secretary of the NPC, said: "Already one in five older people live below the poverty line. Yet the Government has been breathtakingly complacent on the issue."

Protester Jay Ginn, 67, of Coulsdon, Surrey, said: "I think it is time the Government took notice of pensioners. They have worked hard all their lives building the country and now we are just left to rot in poverty."

The NPC wants the basic state pension increased from pounds 84.25 to pounds 114 a week. It says the current payout is just 16 per cent of average earnings. The group, some dressed as skeletons, delivered a 100,000 name petition to Downing Street yesterday. More than 80 MPs have signed an early day motion backing its demands.

The Department for Work and Pensions said: "Tackling pensioner poverty has been our first priority. Since 1997, initiatives such as Pension Credits have helped to lift more than two million pensioners out of absolute poverty and a million people out of relative poverty."

The NPC said 2.5 million of our 11 million pensioners live below the poverty line, most are women. They struggle to pay increasing bills. Council tax went up 50 per cent in the past five years but pensions only increased nine per cent.

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FRIGHT: Protester yesterday