Daniel Hannan, arch Brexiter, has written an article in the Telegraph that will leave many people shaking with anger, unless you are super rich we suppose.
The headline read: Britain faces destitution because it refuses to admit the state pension is unaffordable.
Nice eh?
He said: “The only way for the government to remain solvent is to bring its pension obligations into line with how we live now. I am not talking only of the basic state pension. Public sector pensions, too, will need to reflect reality. On current projections, our main state agencies – in healthcare, education, policing, local government – may cease to be service providers and become pension providers. Their budgets will be swallowed up by obligations to long-retired workers…
100 years old
“But few people want to depend on the state in retirement. A wiser approach is to encourage private provision, giving people control over their pension pots. This can be done either through incentivised savings or through mandatory contributions into competing pension schemes.”
He wrote: “No one would design such a system today. If we had stuck to the actuarial formula of Lloyd George’s time, our retirement age could now be around 100. As late as 1945, the average man claimed his state pension for less than two years (the average woman slightly longer).
“It is not just the span of our days that has lengthened. We are more active in old age, partly because of advances in medicine, and partly because we do less brutalising jobs.”
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Related: Rishi Sunak’s new deck-chair cabinet lampooned & Marr destroys it in 2 mins
