Triple lock on state pension scrapped – here's how much you will lose...

[dutchman]

Received a letter from the DWP the other day headed: "About the general increase in benefits"

Apparently we're all "scroungers" now?

[rebbonk]

The pension is not a benefit, no matter how many times they try to frame it as one. You cannot buy benefits, you can buy missing stamps to increase your pension.

[dutchman]

Triple lock is up for debate, says Farage



Nigel Farage has suggested that Reform UK could remove the triple lock on pensions in an apparent split with Robert Jenrick, his new “chancellor”.

The Reform leader said the future of the triple lock, which guarantees the state pension rises each year by the highest of three measures – inflation, average earnings or 2.5 per cent – was “open for debate”.

Minutes before Mr Farage’s comments, Mr Jenrick said he supported the policy and voters did not need to worry about it being removed.

At a London press conference where he set out Reform’s economic agenda, Mr Jenrick said: “I’ve always been a supporter of the triple lock.

“It’s incredibly important to provide dignity and security to older people on fixed incomes in the last decades of their life, particularly at a time like this where there’s such challenging circumstances with the cost of living.”

Mr Jenrick, who defected from the Conservatives last month, promised that the party would set out more details in the coming weeks.

The Conservatives and Labour have committed to maintaining the triple lock for the foreseeable future. The policy will cost the Treasury an additional £6bn this April when it rises by 4.7 per cent to £12,548 a year.

However, shortly after Mr Jenrick’s comments, Mr Farage told a group of reporters the future of the triple lock was not guaranteed under his leadership.

He said: “I haven’t changed my mind. It’s open for debate. Everything is open for debate.”

This was not the first time Mr Farage suggested that the costly policy could go.

Speaking in May, he said: “Triple lock for pensioners is not something we have addressed as yet.

“We will, between now and the next election. We are, as you can see, building out our policy platform.”

He has also warned that the state pension age must rise more quickly because it was failing to match rising life expectancy.

The state pension age is on course to rise to 67 by 2028 and to 68 by 2046.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2026/02/18/triple-lock-is-up-for-debate-says-farage/

[dutchman]

Tony Blair: ‘Outdated and unaffordable’ state pension must go



Sir Tony Blair has called for the state pension to be abolished because it is “outdated, rigid and increasingly unaffordable”.

In a new report, the Tony Blair Institute (TBI) urged the Government to replace the benefit with a new system called Lifespan Fund, which would require some people to work an extra five years to receive the same payout.

The former prime minister’s think tank also said ministers should ditch the triple lock, scrap pension credit and remove the state retirement age in a raft of reforms that would save an estimated £66bn a year by 2070.

Official figures show the number of retirees will rise from 12.6 million today to nearly 19 million by 2070, increasing state pension spending to almost 8pc of GDP and making reform “unavoidable”, it argued.

Sir Keir Starmer has promised to retain the triple lock for the current parliament, arguing that retirees deserve “certainty” from politicians over their finances. In a poll conducted for The Telegraph across Britain, just 22pc of respondents were in favour of reforming the measure, and 65pc said older people deserved the protection it provided.

However, the TBI said the triple lock had become a “long-run cost escalator” and urged the Pensions Commission to broker a pre-election pact among the major parties, enabling whoever forms the next government to remove it from 2030.

Under the TBI’s Lifespan Fund, workers would receive half a year’s entitlement for every year of National Insurance contributions, up to a maximum of 20. This would require 40 years of contributions from the age of 16, but years spent seeking a job, caring, studying full time or in periods of ill health would count towards someone’s entitlement.

There would be no official retirement age. People could instead choose when to take their pension, which would remain guaranteed for life and be provided by the state.

The amount they receive would vary based on their contributions, age, health and life expectancy, similar to the way pension savers are offered an annuity.

However, the triple lock would be removed and pensions would only rise by the median level of earnings. Anyone who wanted to retire early would have to demonstrate they had access to a total retirement income of at least £12,500 in today’s figures before claiming.

He said: “Britain’s state pension system was built for a different era. We can’t keep pouring money into a system that is increasingly unaffordable. Pension spending must be contained, and that means the triple lock cannot continue after the next election.

“Real reform must also build a better system – one that is fairer, more flexible, and designed for how people live today.”

However, Sir Steve Webb, a former pensions minister, said: “The idea of linking state pension payments to individual health records and individual life expectancy is deeply troubling. Leaving aside issues of confidentiality and data quality, it is very hard to make a precise leap from health records to life expectancy.

“We have just created a new state pension system which is relatively simple and standardised and which forms a firm basis for retirement planning.

“It would be a huge backward step to replace it with something fiendishly complex and highly intrusive, and which would take many decades to implement in full.”

[rebbonk]

Interesting that those who wish to end/alter the state pension have never done a hard day's physical graft in their lives.

[dutchman]

Why you should be afraid of Blair's state pensions plan

Imagine you’re coming up to retirement and dreaming about your well-earned leisure time and freedom ahead. Your plans are in place. All that’s left for you to do is log into a state-run smartphone app that tells you when the Government thinks you’re going to die – a kind of bureaucratic Grim Reaper.

Depending on how long it reckons you have left, it will decide how much state pension you will receive, and then you can consider if it’s enough to live on or if you’d better keep working.

This may sound like a dystopian hallucination, but it is the latest suggestion on how to overhaul the state pension system, as put forward on Friday by the Tony Blair Institute (TBI).

At the moment, the size of your state pension is determined by how many years of National Insurance contributions you’ve made and when you were born.

Under the think-tank’s model, the size of your state pension would be determined by your life expectancy at retirement.

The Government would riffle through your NHS records, use population data and send you off for a health check to forecast your bespoke end date.

Using all that information, it would decide how much state pension you get, with the general premise that everyone should have 20 years’ worth. If you decide to retire while you’re forecast to have more than 20 years ahead of you, you’ll get a lower monthly income. Or retire with less time ahead and you’ll get more.

In other words, the healthier you are, the less you would receive.

The TBI report says retirees wouldn’t be rewarded with a bigger retirement income for excessive drinking and smoking and other unhealthy behaviours that curb life expectancy. But the mind boggles how that would be policed.

And that’s not even the most out-there bit of the TBI proposals.

The state pension would be replaced altogether with a so-called Lifespan Fund, some of which you could access during your working life, for example if you lose your job, start a business, retrain or look after loved ones.

The argument here is that the state pension was designed around an old life model of education-work-retirement, which no longer exists.

We need an updated system to accommodate the new complexities of modern life. The days of a job for life are long over and times of unemployment and retraining are inevitable, especially as AI disrupts work as we know it.

The state should step in here to give people a helping hand, not just at retirement, the TBI argues.

For some, accessing a portion of their entitlement early could be invaluable – maybe even the making of them. But there’d likely be just as many workers who, for example, use theirs to set up a business that does not take off and end up with a lower state income in retirement as a result.

The TBI proposal may be fairer than the current system, where those with a higher life expectancy get far more from the state pension pot than those with a lower one. But it is a cautionary tale in what can happen when you attempt to fix it.

Attempts at fairness requires nuance, nuance creates endless complexity (and complexity can usually be gamed). Before you know it, the current crude, blunt – but reasonably simple – system doesn’t look so bad after all.

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/mailplus/article-15788291/Tony-Blair-state-pensions-health-data-payout-RACHEL-RICKARD-STRAUS.html