There is an added complication.
At present the personal allowance is £7,475pa. This will increase to £8,105 for 2012-13 and to £9,205 for 2013-14. The over-65s personal allowance is currently £10,500 and this is to be frozen. Furthermore, people reaching 65 from April 2013 will not be eligible for the increased allowance, so their allowance will be £9,205 when someone who reached 65 a little earlier will be allowed £10,500. So they will be £259 (£10,500-£9,205 = £1,295 x 20% = £259) worse off. Of course, over 65s who can take advantage of the £10,500 allowance might properly have expected that allowance to increase to cope with inflation, so they too will be worse off, but to a lesser degree. (This incidentally creates yet another layer of unequally treated pensioners. We already have those who draw their pension under the 44/39 year NI contribution rule who are often worse off than those only required to contribute 30 years. The new guaranteed pension of £140 per week, said to be introduced by 2015, will only be available to new pensioners.)
Of course the usual spin is imposed on this. Intriguingly it is reported that the new measure will “save” the government £1bn by 2015. This of course is designed to give the impression that the government is being prudent. In fact quite the reverse is true. The £1bn will not be “saved”. That amount will be an additional burden on pensioner taxpayers and the sum so taken from them, far from being saved, will be added to the amount the government wastes each year. The proper report should read "This will give the government an additional £1bn a year to squander which will be taken exclusively from older people".
It will be interesting to see how the over 65 vote for this apology for a government holds up by the time it has “saved” its precious £1bn.