Truth about pensions; YOUR SHOUT

Evening Chronicle (Newcastle, England), June 22, 2009

TORY Stephen Parkinson is clearly better at fiction than he is at history (Your Shout, June 17). His claim that Tories introduced pensions and unemployment benefit is bogus. The Old Age Pension and Labour Exchanges were introduced by the Liberal Government of 1906 and were fought tooth and nail by the Tories.

It is true to say that Winston Churchill was part of that history as he was the Liberal Minister at the Board of Trade in that government.

As a Liberal he also introduced the first Minimum Wage legislation, opposed by Tories then and again when Labour brought it back in the late 1990s.

RON BEADLE, pictured, Newcastle North Liberal Democrats Via e-mail