John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
What would be the saving were the Government to raise the age by one year to 68?
Mel Stride (Minister of State for Pensions)
That is a beautiful question because it is precise; it requires an answer that one cannot duck. I will write to my right hon. Friend with that information.
April 3, 2023
The problem with the question, is that your savings, is someone else’s loss.
Why not ask the honest questions?
1. How much will people lose?
2. How much extra will people be forced to pay for a less valuable pension?
April 3, 2023
@LB; If I might add…
3. How much more will it cost the NHS in further occupational injury and treatment, especially among manual workers?
April 3, 2023
Moving the retirement age to 68 requjres some thought. It should be a retirement age related to the physical demands of the work they are doing. Someone digging trenches should not be expected to be doing it after the age of sixty. The other side of the coin would be scribes in Westminster or Cardiff who could be expected to work till seventy.
The weakness of our State Pension is that is dependent on robbing Peter (those in work) to pay Paul ( those about to retire); it should be investment based and outsjde government control apart from law.
A word of warning prior to retirement, inform DWP of the date. If you don’t do this they refuse to pay the arrears. A nice little earner for the DWP. Caveat Emptor.
April 3, 2023
“The weakness of our State Pension is that is dependent on robbing Peter (those in work) to pay Paul ( those about to retire);”
So your (great) grandparents (after 1911 but prior to the universal basic State Pension) should not have got a state pension, because they had not paid in for one? There is no problem with the current way of funding the system, assuming those currently in work are not shortsighted and object to paying taxes…
it should be investment based and outsjde government control apart from law.”
Nice idea, recreating the old “Friendly Societies” but how long would that last before they start to collapse, or be demutualised like so many Building Societies, and then become cash-cow for a few carpetbaggers with all the risks that opens up – as we saw with the ‘banks’.
April 3, 2023
Moving the retirement age to 68 requires some thought. It should be a retirement age related to the physical demands of the work they are doing. Someone digging trenches should not be expected to be doing it after the age of sixty. The other side of the coin would be scribes in Westminster or Cardiff who could be expected to work till seventy.
The weakness of our State Pension is that it is dependent on robbing Peter (those in work) to pay Paul ( those about to retire); it should be investment based and outside government control appart from law.
A word of warning prior to retirement, inform DWP of the date. If you don’t do this they refuse to pay the arrears. A nice little earner for the DWP. Caveat Emptor.
April 3, 2023
‘one cannot duck’ ? really? – stand by to be provided with a duck!
April 4, 2023
Mel Strideâs mentioning of ducking the question indicates that his first thought was how to do so. Realising he couldnât he fell back on the option of writing. Just as in Fawlty Towers Gourmet Night: Duckâs off.
April 3, 2023
Well there is more than just the saving in the basic state pension.
There is the increase in people forced to work an extra year continuing to pay in employees National insurance.
There is the offset of the NEST pension this government has pushed everyone into with no promise of any decent return and nothing like the public sector pension for the 8% invested and that will get moved on a year too.
I know three people last year that died just after retiring. There must be some consideration of the job roles people have worked in, especially those working from age 15 to 16.
April 3, 2023
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Insurance_Fund
Just how much is paid out in pension credits to people who didnât contribute anything at all to our national insurance fund? What % is this of the total state pension benefit annually?
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1124933/Great_Britain_National_Insurance_Fund_Account_-_2021_to_2022.pdf
April 4, 2023
What would be the saving if you stopped all the people living abroad buying NI credits to claim UK RP? There are so many pension tourists that HMRC has opened a dedicated phone line for them. It’s now become a lucrative business to buy multiple pensions in multiple countries. Yet again the British taxpayer is subsidising people living abroad.
April 4, 2023
Sounds to me that, far from answering your “beautiful question” which is actually very simple to answer !
Mel Stride has clearly had to buy time to go away and get her officials to find a way of not answering it !
April 5, 2023
JR: “What would be the saving were the Government to raise the age by one year to 68?”
Very good Mr Redwood. Now would you ask another question, please?
How much would the government save it if abolished:
(a) The ÂŁ100,000 annual gratuity to one time Prime ministers.
(b) The gratuitous ‘severance pay’ an MPs receives once he or she loses his or her seat.
April 10, 2023
The TIMES says âTwenty years since they signed up to join the EU, our friends from Poland are returning home. Could Brits looking for a better life soon follow them?â
Is this being tracked properly so that years of pension rights arenât continued to be accrued in the UK. I have always wondered about the Windrush people, how does the government know they stayed in the UK unless there were tax and national insurance made by them every year and recorded? If they paid tax and NI every year why did the pension problems this generation experienced begin and how are you going to control people who applied for residence status in the UK and then went straight back home, what stops them coming back at 68 and claiming a pension credit, housing benefit and the like?
What went wrong with Windrush and all the claims about the government for mistreatment and how are you going to make sure that all the EU people that resided here but have since left arenât having the same issues in the future?
April 10, 2023
John, does your government even know what % of the Windrush generation are on full âpension credits + housing benefit and other benefitsâ rather than accrued pension contribution benefits (the original state pension requiring 39 years of payments?