Chancellor Rishi Sunak hints at ruling out 8% pension rise

SomeMadeUpName

Andy_L said:

Dazed_and_C0nfused said:

Winger Fuel Payment

Christmas Bonus
Bus pass
Eye test
Prescriptions

Not paying NI

Or as they call it in most of Europe, 'Social Charges'.  Which is a much better name for a tax which is spent on social welfare.

So yes, not paying it on investment income is a major boon.

steampowered

mat1964 said:

Yup a global pandemic which has created a unique situation where average earnings will be technically 8% was easily foreseeable.

It was absolutely foreseeable that earnings would increase above inflation. An 8% increase is high but it is hardly unheard of. 

xylophone

Winger Fuel Payment

Watching too much football?    But joking aside a reasonable degree of help.

Bus pass

Certainly worthwhile, at least for those with reliable and frequent public transport.

Eye test

But not the glasses/lenses

Prescriptions

Worthwhile for those on medication.

Christmas Bonus

£10 is hardly a life changing amount?

xylophone

Not paying NI

For those still working after state pension age.....

daveyjp

steampowered said:

aardvaak said:

Pensioners have suffered a decrease in income during the pandemic and deserve the increase they can not work and have no other means of support

Sorry but pensioners had their entire working life to plan for retirement. Decades to contribute into a private pension or build up investments.

If they failed to do I have zero sympathy with complaining that the state pension is a bit low - it's enough to live on, and that's all it should be.

The world of the 60s, 70s when current pensioners were starting out in life, was very much different to today, even more so for women.

Albermarle

I think the end result is that the Triple lock will be left in place , so they can say they stick with their election promises .
However the rise in earnings will be recalculated in some way just for this years calculation ,to take account of the special circumstances . 
So the projected 8% will become say 5% , and they can still then say it is way above what the non pensioner population has seen and we are all in it together . Plus save a Billion or two .

doodling

Hi,

steampowered said:

mat1964 said:

Yup a global pandemic which has created a unique situation where average earnings will be technically 8% was easily foreseeable.

It was absolutely foreseeable that earnings would increase above inflation. An 8% increase is high but it is hardly unheard of. 

But that is not what happened.  Earnings have not risen much compared to two years ago, what has happened is that they have gone down and gone back up again.  The triple lock prevented the state pension from going down when earnings went down so protected pensioners but pensioners are now in the position where they may benefit from an upside that no-one else sees.  The aim of the triple lock was to ensure that pensions kept pace with earnings or 2.5% or CPI, not that pensions grow significantly above all of those measures.

I don't think a dip in wages of the scale experienced during the pandemic was foreseeable.

Silvertabby

Albermarle said:

I think the end result is that the Triple lock will be left in place , so they can say they stick with their election promises .
However the rise in earnings will be recalculated in some way just for this years calculation ,to take account of the special circumstances . 
So the projected 8% will become say 5% , and they can still then say it is way above what the non pensioner population has seen and we are all in it together . Plus save a Billion or two .

That would be the fairest way - it must be possible to strip out the 'back to 100% post furlough 80%' , thereby giving a more accurate reflection of annual salary increases.

The 'I'm entitled' brigade won't like it, though.  Most of the demands for the full increase have been based on the assertion that the UK State pension is the lowest in Europe - but even that isn't necessarily true when you take in the extras that European pensioners don't get.

Goldwing1

"Sorry but pensioners had their entire working life to plan for retirement. Decades to contribute into a private pension or build up investments."

That sounds reasonable but we have people relying on food banks. It's a bit difficult to save when you can't feed your kids or maybe just yourself.

Grumpy_chap

My initial comment on this is around the way the mechanism for the salary link to the triple lock work has no "memory" - it simply looks at this year earnings versus last year earnings. 

In most circumstances that is sufficient.  However, when there is an event meaning that average earnings in year 2 dip below year 1 before recovering back to the year 1 level in year 3, the failure of the rules to include a "memory" result in the anomalous outcome in the pension calculation.  In the mean-time, with earnings haven fallen in year 2, another part of the triple lock secured the pension uplift in year 2.  The result is that pensions had the triple-lock uplift in year 2 then the earning uplift in year 3, meaning a rate of increase far above earnings from year 1 to year 3.

In a similar way, the BBC reported today that airline bookings have surged, with one company seeing an increase of 400% in bookings, but without linking that to normal bookings, the increase can be meaningless.  If there were 10 bookings on Wednesday and 40 bookings on Thursday, that is the increase of 400%, but still not a viable airline.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-57770236

Then I saw this comment and wanted to understand the part of thinking and fact that I had not become aware of:

aardvaak said:

Pensioners have suffered a decrease in income during the pandemic and deserve the increase they can not work and have no other means of support

Can @aardvaak give some clarity please?