UK: Retirement age to rise by as much as six months per year

[steve187]

if costs are a factor, the uk should stop giving 60 year olds free public transport, free meds, heating allowance etc and make it same age as retirement.

they have started, bus passes and pension credits ar now set to your personal state retirement age

[7by7]

the problem as I see it is that money that was intended to support pensions should have been protected and untouchable for other budgets, instead through serious fiscal mismanagement mostly by the labour party they have used the pension pot for other things to cover their asses

Like I have said many times before - Tony Blair and Gordon Brown should be in jail for gross stupidity and squandering UK tax payers money - just look what Brown did with the UK gold reserves - he should be locked up for that alone

I have been planning for years to get my UK state pension at 65 (I can afford it but I'm still pissed and angry) only to find that I will have to pay approx. 10k GBP back to the government in my first year were I at 65 should have been getting my money - they changed the rules upped the age by a year and in my opinion that has cost me "ten thousand pounds" some people have had it increased up to 3 years aged 68, that means for those affected you will be contributing 30k of your first 3 year pension to an incompetent squandering crowd of millionaires that have been in office in the UK and don't give a To55

Ah I smell a load of right wing rubbish here. You are blaming Brown and Blair. But what about the 17 years of Tory miss-rule we had before that. This is an issue that has been building up for years, long before Blair and Brown where even born. Successive governments have not put the money aside and frankly a persons contributions do not actually cover the cost of a pension anyway. And yes they introduced and increase in pension age. They had to after 17 years of Tory's spending the pension money and giving away profitable state owned company's away to their friends in the city. Oh and let us not forget the massive deregulation of the financial sector and banks led by Thatcher.

Neither of the above posts, and others of a similar vein, are relevant to the problem.

From this parliamentary briefing paper

National insurance benefits are funded by a system of compulsory contributions on earnings, paid by employees, employers and the self-employed. Receipts from these contributions – NICs, for short – are paid into the National Insurance Fund, kept separate from all other revenue raised by national taxes. The Fund is used exclusively to pay for contributory benefits, and operates on a ‘pay as you go’ basis: broadly speaking, this year’s contributions pay for this year’s benefits.

Not all NICs are paid into the fund; a small proportion goes toward the NHS; but none of it is used for any other government expenditure. To do so would be illegal without a radical change to the law.

So, as previously explained, the state pensions of those retired are funded from the NICs of those working.

Longer life expectancy combined with falling birth rate means that there are now fewer workers per pensioner than when the scheme was introduced; this means, it is no longer fit for purpose; despite the fund's surplus of contributions over benefits actually increasing since the 1990s; due mainly to increases in both employees and employers NICs, and those paid by the self employed, of course.

Increasing contributions has helped; and increasing the state retirement age will do so, too. But in reality it is akin to rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.

The system needed a radical overhaul at least 30 years ago; but neither the Tories nor Labour had the balls to do it. It would have been unpopular and lost them votes and the effluent would have hit the air-conditioning long after those politicians had themselves retired.

But that time is getting closer and closer.