8% Old Age Pensions Increase
Cancelled by Squandering Sunak
The Tory Nasty Party's
profligate Chancellor Shiti Sunak hints at ruling out the scheduled – April
2022 - 'and pledged' - 8% rise in the frugal state pension 'hand to mouth'
payments to Food Bank Britain's
Old Age Retirees.
Beware Sunak - regardless of any depletion of the content of the national Treasury coffers due to Covid-1984's scamdemic legacy - and your professional incompetence - dare fuck with our
pensions and ensure an end to your front bench / ministerial political career.
Obviously this bean counting
wanker has not considered the implications, viz the negative kickback to any
political future - via the medium of his Richmond (Yorks) constituency ballot
box - come the next election. Albeit he might well win the Most Despised Cunt
title – currently 'still' held by ex-New Labour leader and closet case war criminal,
Anthony Charles Lynton Bliar.
rishi.sunak.mp@parliament.uk
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-57762787
The chancellor has given his
strongest indication yet of ruling out a predicted 8% rise in the state pension
next year.
Official forecasts suggest
that the link with earnings growth could mean the bumper rise in the amount
paid from April 2022.
Rishi Sunak told the BBC a
decision on pensions would be "based on fairness for pensioners and for
taxpayers".
Various commentators have
called for an overhaul of the rules.
However, groups representing
older people say the government's promises to pensioners should remain.
Sunak told BBC Radio 4's
Today programme: "The triple lock is government policy but I recognise
people's concerns about what that might mean, given some of the numbers that
are being put around.
"We will approach these
decisions with fairness in mind - fairness for both pensioners but also for
taxpayers."
He said there were
"some questions around the earnings numbers".
Why would the state pension
rise?
The rise in pensions each
year is governed by what is known as the triple lock - a Conservative manifesto
promise until at least 2024.
This means the state pension
increases in line with the rising cost of living seen in the Consumer Prices
Index (CPI) measure of inflation, increasing average wages, or 2.5%, whichever
of those three is highest.
Predictions by the Bank of
England suggest that average earnings could go up by 8%, hence the equivalent
rise in the state pension.
State pension predicted to
rise by 8%
Public finances at risk
after Covid, says watchdog
That would cost the Treasury
£3bn more than previously anticipated, according to the government's official
forecaster - the Office for Budget Responsibility.
Many economists point out
the sharp rise in earnings is an anomaly created, in part, by calculations
being affected by people coming off furlough.
Can the chancellor break the
promise? Does a bear shit in the woods? Was Iraq invaded on a total lie in 2003?
There is no reason in law
why the chancellor cannot change the way earnings are judged in the triple lock
system.
He is certainly under
pressure to do some from some quarters.
Lord David Willetts,
president of the Resolution Foundation, a think tank focusing on people on
lower incomes, said: "The Covid crisis has laid bare the design faults of
the triple lock, with a severe jobs crisis last year inadvertently contributing
to an unnecessary and unjustified 8% rise in the state pension next year.
"The chancellor should
take the opportunity this autumn to replace the triple lock with a smoothed
earnings link. This would mean the state pension would rise in line with the
living standards of working age people - a change that would be fair to all
generations."
However, Caroline Abrahams,
charity director at Age UK, said: "We do not think the government should
rush headlong towards a decision to suspend it. Pensioner poverty has been
rising in recent years.
"While older people we
speak to are generally keen to do their bit to help as the pandemic continues,
they are also wary of unscrupulous policymakers who might want use exceptional
times as a reason to make permanent changes - a government sleight of hand that
would not be acceptable at all."
How can 'fairness' be
judged?
The chancellor said that he
would hold "fairness in mind" for any decision that it is made, but
fairness can be hard to quantify.
At present: The full,
new flat-rate state pension (for those who reached state pension age after
April 2016) is £179.60 a week
The full, old basic state
pension (for those who reached state pension age before April 2016) is £137.60
a week
That is one of the least
generous state pensions in Europe, even
if there was a significant rise next year.
The former pensions
minister, Baroness Ros Altmann, also pointed out that, for many people, the
state pension was their only retirement income.
"Millions of pensioners
- especially women - rely solely on state pensions because they did not have
the opportunity to build up private pensions when younger," she said.
She has called for a
wholesale review of pensioner benefits, rather than a short-term change in the
rules.
Other considerations of
"fairness" might also include the wide range of life expectancy in
different parts of the country, the different rules determining the rise in
Pension Credit - a state pension top-up, and the expectations of younger people
about their eventual state pension entitlement.