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Axing the triple lock could be another #dementia tax debacle – politicalbetting.com
Axing the triple lock could be another #dementia tax debacle – politicalbetting.com
The former pensions minister during the Coalition government, Steve Webb, has made an acute observation about the government’s state pension triple lock dilemma – the law requires that the triple lock is applied. He noted in the I
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EXCLUSIVE Former pensions secretary tells imoney that Tory manifesto pledges are not the issue. Pensions legislation already allows the Government to estimate the rise in earnings as they see fit.
In fact Webb says the first sentence, Tom Selby, head of retirement policy at AJ Bell, says the second (which, if true, completely nullifies the first).
Its only a problem if they don't revert to it once the pandemic is over and things have settled down.
The great overseas aid betrayal was going to be a killer as well, and it never shifted the needle, despite the screeching for weeks.
Its nothing like the dementia tax, as that was spun as people losing their homes that they worked hard to buy.
I would argue the optics would be far worse if they give oldies 8%, while NHS is getting 3%.
Now that furlough is being wound down wages are bouncing back from this artificially low figure to something slightly better than normal. It would be absurd if the consequence of the furlough scheme was a significant increase in pensions and if that requires legislation to change it that change should be in the budget. I really don't see this hurting the government. They just need to do it and ensure that pensions remain in step with the underlying increase in wages.
My point about overseas aid, there was ridiculous screeching, your killing babies etc, and the public, unmoved.
I highly doubt oldies only getting 3% for one year will cause Tory client vote to shift, even if we get the nad faith actors screaming your killing granny.
Remember through out the pandemic the likes of the modellers getting it wrong never get the criticism, its the government that the buck stops with.
Failure to deploy 10 millions of doses the UK has available would be disastrous and certainly kill the narrative about haven't they done well on vaccines.
My experience of them is that they are mostly beyond reason. Many of them read the Daily Mail, ffs.
This is a tough one for Johnson.
The elderly are fairly likely to be relatively poor in the Red Wall, too, I would think. Which won't help.
https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN00290/SN00290.pdf
My mother is 73 and has a weakened immune system and was told previously to shield. She was not prioritised over others in her age group despite her medical condition for the first vaccination round. She has been speaking to her surgery to ensure that if booster jabs do start that she is on the vulnerable list to receive one.
We're debtaing a 3% or an 8+% rise for pensioners. After the years of effort to raise them out of increasing poverty pensioners won't starve with *only* 3%. But the government aren't scrapping this, merely suspending it.
The question will be do you pensioners trust this government? So far they have been more trusting than other demographics, but haven't so far been betrayed and lied to like other groups have. At the same time as pensioners face their "suspension" of the triple lock the working poor will lose £20 a week that will hot some of them really hard.
So, will pensioners think "good old Boris, he will look after us" and keep backing the Tories? Or is this the point where they realise he couldn't give a toss?
Lay Biden, lay con maj.
There’s going to be way more people upset by an 8% award - including all of the public sector unions, and fiscally conservative pensioners who see the spending coming from borrowed money, than might be happy with it.
1 in 3 Working parents are going to lose £1000 per family but pensions are going to get an 8% rise while public sector workers got nothing.
To say the optics are terrible would be to understate the issue
The triple lock was designed to ensure that current pensioners did not miss out on the wealth of their employed peers.
Alright I was taking a swing. It's early morning and I have a headache, but I know from experience just how irrational such voters can be when it coes to this topic. Many seem to think being old gives them the right to be mollycoddled. You try explaining it to them.
In principle there is nothing wrong with them but only provided that their rulings do not conflict with the law of the land or seek to usurp it.
The difficulty is that sometimes they do or seek to use religious pressure to force women (and it is usually women) to give up rights they are legally entitled to. In such cases, I think the law should intervene.
Unless he is a Tory tax-dodger, of course.
James Heappey - "Safe passage is also other words for being brought to the front of the queue... "
https://twitter.com/Haggis_UK/status/1430794925889703938?s=20
Even if we ignore your ifs, the Mercer rankings (in your link) rate the UK pension system as a whole at C+, behind eg:
Netherlands A
Denmark A
Israel B
Australia B
Finland B
Sweden B
Norway B
Singapore B
Canada B
New Zealand B
Germany B
Chile B
Switzerland B
Ireland B
If only Maggie hadn’t spaffed all that North Sea oil money up the wall during the 1980s. The entire system could have been properly funded instead of the current Ponzi scheme.
If you continue to run scared at every whiff of unpopularity theres no point to winning big in the first place.
I'd scrap it tomorrow, but given the politics I can see why Boris and Co probably won't.
If we're stuck with it, my suggestion is that this particular issue is actually quite easy to fix. Keep almost the same system as now, but calculated on the mean of the last 5 years for each value.
So we'd smooth out any wild year to year swings, whilst still ensuring pensions keep pace with wages and prices.
Perhaps giving them non means tested ever increasing amounts of cash, earned by those grandchildren is not the answer.
https://twitter.com/mrjamesob/status/1430511659794239488
The problem you have is if you keep trying to put those decisions off or fudge them so it neither does much while still upsetting people.
Whoever would have known that?
The original pensions-earnings link was broken in 1980, and it allowed taxes to be lower for the following 30 years. The generation that benefited from those lower taxes are now reaching retirement and are understandably shocked that the state pension is pretty naff.
But short of a time machine, what's a government to do?
(One important difference between pensions and international aid, though. Rightly or wrongly, the aid cut was popular with voters and everyone knew it. Restricting pensions will be unpopular with some of the Conservatives' core vote. Labour might as well go with being the party of working age people with some gesture to protect poorer pensioners.)
I didn't vote for Brexit, I own a company in the EU, its far from ideal, but I move on, being pragmatic about what to do.
Suck it up...
I really did mean specifically the bus thing. I think people think it's clever, but for me all it does it make people look obsessed with a slogan on a bus, which makes it easier for their criticisms to be dismissed - after all, if someone is still moaning about a slogan on a bus what worth their current criticisms?
"I dont remember anyone promising X bad thing" works better making the same point.
Politically however it may be difficult. A few years ago a poll found scrapping it would put 34% of over 55s off voting Conservative and they are the Tory core vote
https://www.ftadviser.com/state-pension/2017/04/24/scrapping-triple-lock-would-cost-votes-poll-finds/
Not that I am. Although I had some seriously ill-fortune at one time in my life, as a result of prudence and good luck in eventually getting a public service job I'm comfortable enough.
So If the triple lock goes, so be it. I'd rather that than the cut in Universal Credit.
However that assumes you've made enough full years of NI contributions. Many people have not.
The State basically admits that the state pension is not enough to live on by adding dole money aka Pension Credit to those who have to rely on it.I'm not sue what the trigger level is - I imagine it depends on renting costs etc. as well as savings.
https://www.gov.uk/pension-credit
Edit: SP is also taxable, as is pension credit I believe. And many occupational pensions are quite small.
Something which started when there were far fewer pensioners and when they tended to be far poorer.
But why should a pensioner now get lower priced entry to a sports match for example.
I think the "not paid into a fund" argument is pretty specious anyway. When it raises its head in any other sphere it's about who gets what in a bankruptcy. With an entity which can't go bankrupt and whose word is thought except by Philip T to be its bond, it makes no odds whether there's a designated pot or not.
I really hate posters who make a contentious point and then say I must be off now, but I must be off now. Surf at Bude 2-4' and clean.
As for the optics, think about how "we're all in this together" will sound in the red wall. "We can't afford to maintain the recovery plan to pay you a decent pension because we're busy cutting your UC and giving you a real terms pay cut. Can we count on your vote again at the next election?"
I'd hope hed agree it may be the right thing to do and the hit needs taking.
By contrast, there are a bunch of working age benefits where we truly are one of the worst in the developed world. And the government is freezing those so they get even worse - in order to fund pension increases. Lest we forget, the poverty rate of pensioners is lower than that of working age people (and children, who for some reason there is no political momentum to address long term and rather dramatic child poverty rates).
Saying that the state pension is the lowest in the OECD is accurate but misleading, since pensions go far beyond the state pension - by design.
9.3% is a record low for the series
https://twitter.com/ONS/status/1430814377230352384?s=20
A generation ago there were fewer pensioners, they owned fewer homes, went on fewer holidays, went to restaurants less frequently.
Now there are still many poor pensioners but they are not visible in the way the affluent oldies are.
The other factor is that if you are a home owner, or in old fashioned subsidised social housing, a pension shouldn't be too bad to live on, and if you are renting privately it's going to be grim.
My parents - married, home owners - are looking at what they'll get in a couple of years when they're both eligible to draw their pensions, and thinking they will be really comfortably off.
But I can imagine say a recent divorcee whose just lost his house in the divorce having a pretty rough time of it.