Triple lock to go?

This is costing £45bn per annum and last week it was revealed that pensioners today are better off than they have ever been.

But this will not last - pensioners today are one thing but the pensioners of tomorrow face a far grimmer future.

Our pensions were once the best funded in the world.  That ended when Brown decided to tax them, taking £5bn a year from pension funds at a time when they were also being hit by more and more regulatory costs.  Low 15 year gilt prices on which pension income is based and increasing longevity also 'hammered' our pensions.   Add to that the failed stakeholder pension experiment, also introduced by Brown and the undermining of pensions by fiddling with the rules, there is a whole generation of people with totally inadequate funding for retirement.

OK longer term things will get better, the ending of means-testing and the new auto-enrollment schemes in the process of being introduced will help many.  But for a whole generation this is too late.

So though today's pensioners are far better off  than ever before we will soon get a new generation who, for the first time, will be worse off in retirement than their parents.  For these people the State Pension will be a vital ingredient of their retirement and these are the ones who will be most hurt by the removal of the triple lock.

I understand fully the need to save money, of course, but to change the State Pension on the basis of today's 'better off' pensioners is wrong.  Ill-conceived government policy has seriously damaged their pensions so the government owes it to the next generation of pensioners to at least keep the 'triple-lock'.   There are far less deserving cases on whom the ax should be swung than the next generation of pensioners.

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PS:  My updating of this blog is a bit sporadic at the moment.  Pressures of work in the run up to the holiday season is to blame and it will be a bit hit and miss for a couple of months more.  My apologies - normal service will resume in due course.