The Government's position on pensions is unsustainable, and can only make intergenerational inequality worse
The best of Voices delivered to your inbox every week - from controversial columns to expert analysis Sign up for our free weekly Voices newsletter for expert opinion and columns Sign up to our free weekly Voices newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has calculated the trade-off precisely; with the triple lock, a full old age pension in 2060 is projected to be worth 27.5 per cent of average earnings and will be available from age 69. If we were to abandon the triple lock, and link only to the growth in wages, then a slightly lower value of relative pension – 24.2 per cent of average earnings – would be paid, but could be collected at the earlier age of 67 and a half. In the context of the good economic years that so many baby boomers lived through, with often vast unearned windfalls from successive property booms, and today’s impossible situation for first-time buyers, as well as university tuition fees and so many other radical alterations on the generational balance of power, the case for easing the “triple lock” now is overwhelming. As the Pensions Select Committee and the Cridland Independent Report on the state pension age both concluded, the present arrangement is neither sustainable nor fair, and pensions should now be linked solely to earnings.
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