Triple lock state pension? I'm here for it!

Yikes. In a few weeks I will be a pensioner. Literally.

On my next birthday, in March, I will be 66 and last week I got a letter from the Department for Work & Pensions that told me how much state pension I will get.

According to the DWP I will receive a small one-off payment followed by regular payments every four weeks after that.

It's not enough to live on (so I will be working for a while yet!) but it's welcome nonetheless and I deserve it!

I started full-time paid employment in September 1980, two months after graduating from university, and I've worked ever since.

Two-and-a-half years in public relations were followed by 16 years as a freelance journalist during which time I worked on various projects and publications.

They included the Media Monitoring Unit which monitored television current affairs programmes for political bias. I also got involved in events management, but my bread and butter was editing magazines.

Then, in January 1999, I was appointed director of Forest and, although I had no long term plan, events took over and here I am, 26 years later, still defending the right to smoke (or, as I see it, battling Big Government).

During my working life (45 years and counting) I've worked for other people, and for myself. I've worked in offices, in 'work spaces', and from home.

I've worked for small companies, working with and managing small teams of people, and I've worked on my own.

I've been lucky, I think, because one job generally led to another, or I just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

None of it constitutes a 'career' because none of it was planned so, you younger readers, please don't follow my example.

Nevertheless, I've paid my fair share of tax (income tax and national insurance), which brings me back to that state pension.

Did I mention I'm an enthusiastic fan of the triple lock, described here as the arrangement by which 'the state pension goes up each year by either 2.5%, inflation, or earnings growth - whichever is the highest figure'?

It's almost certainly unsustainable (see 'Pensioners have never had it so good', The Spectator) but it will take a brave Chancellor to infuriate millions of pensioners by taking away something many now consider their right.

It's not, of course, and, in all seriousness, if the triple lock was scrapped I wouldn't complain.

Like the winter fuel allowance and 'free' prescriptions for the elderly, it does seem crazy that everyone, regardless of how well off they are, benefits universally.

Means testing is arguably the fairest option. The problem, as I understand it, is that means testing costs a lot of money and it's easier, administratively, to give the payment to everyone, or no-one.

That, at least, was one of the arguments regarding the winter fuel payment.

One issue with means testing the state pension is that it disadvantages those who have scrimped and saved and put money aside for their old age, either in a private pension or in a savings account.

But the bigger problem here is the welfare state which ought to exist to help those with the greatest need, but instead 'helps' everyone, even those who don't need state handouts.

Then again, if you pay 50% of your earnings to the state (top rate of income tax plus national insurance), you probably expect to get something back.

Personally I would settle for better public services including Scandinavian style care for the elderly, but I don't see that happening any time soon.

Alternatively, introduce a flat tax rate and the argument for universal benefit might be harder to maintain.

Comments

[Pat Nurse]

This is also the year of my retirement.

I started work in 1976 at a bakery and butcher's shop, then in a factory, and then for British Rail in the old Traveller's Fayre railway cafe.

I lost faith in unions when the National Union of Railwaymen refused to help me keep my job when I got pregnant with my first child in 1980. Apparently, I had to have worked with BR for 2 years and 11 weeks up to my due date but had only worked 2 years and 9 weeks and there was no flexiblity so I lost my job when I had my baby. How different things are now for pregnant women who want to go back to work.

I had 10 years of hell living on social security, and the occasional cleaning job after that, as my family grew and then, thanks to Maggie Thatcher, I was able to get free adult education at college to get some qualifications which led me to my employment as a journalist.

I have worked without a break since 1990 and despite the slanderous accusation that smokers cost the economy and their employers, I have never been off work with a smoking related illness, nor skived off to sneak crafty fag breaks when the war on smokers began in earnest and office bans came into effect.

I have earned every penny of my pension and I am looking forward to it. After Robert Maxwell, I was never very keen on investing in private pensions, and with a big family to support could not really afford it, so I will be relying on the state pension which has gladly taken much tax off me during my 50 year working life with the promise that one day some would come back to me in my old age.

[PJH]

The state pension is already means tested (to an extent); it's taxable income. If that's all you have, it (currently) isn't taxed though. If you get extra income, personal pension eg, it starts getting taxed.