Liz Truss has said the Government is yet to make a decision about whether it will raise the age of retirement to reduce public expenditure.
The Prime Minister was asked by journalists today whether ministers are considering raising the age of retirement to balance the public books.
In response, the Prime Minister failed to rule out raising the state pension age above 67. “You’re asking me to speculate about all kinds of decisions that haven’t yet been made,” she said.
Ms Truss added that she would “do what it takes” to fix the economy as the country grapples with soaring energy prices and inflation.
She said: “What’s first of all important is that we dealt with the energy prices people were facing. We’ve helped to curb inflation through that intervention. We’ve reduced taxes to get the economy growing.
“We’re going to be doing economic reforms in areas like moving faster with building projects, moving faster with transport projects to get the economy going. And that is what we need to do because we are facing a very difficult international situation, a slowing global economy. So yes, I will do what it takes to fix those issues.”
The state pension age is currently due to increase to 68 between 2044 and 2046, however the Government is considering bringing this forward following an independent review published earlier this year.
The review, carried out by former director general of the Confederation of British Industry, John Cridland, recommended raising the age of retirement to 68 between 2037 and 2039.
He made the recommendation due to the increasing number of people from the Baby Boomer generation reaching retirement age, along with the rise in life expectancy.
However, Caroline Abrahams, Charity Director at Age UK, said now was not the right time to raise the State Pension age.
“Raising the State Pension age improves the Government’s finances in the longer term, but there’s no objective justification for it at the moment as life expectancy has clearly stalled,” she said.
Ms Abrahams said the people who will lose out the most as a results of the changes would be “those unable to work up to their State Pension age due to ill health and caring responsibilities, as well as anyone with few or outdated qualifications who becomes unemployed in mid-life”.
She added: “As things stand, and against the context of endemic ageism in the labour market, any decision by the Government to make today’s fifty-somethings wait longer for their State Pension would be setting up hundreds of thousands of ordinary men and women for a miserable and impoverished period in their run up to retirement – a regressive and deeply regrettable step.”
Ms Truss was speaking to journalists during the third day of the Conservative Party Conference being held in Birmingham.
The Prime Minister also refused to say whether benefits will be raised in line with inflation next year amid widespread speculation that the Government is planning a real-terms cut to welfare from April 2023.
The comments come one day after the Government was forced to U-turn on its plan to introduce tax cuts for the country’s top earners following a growing Tory revolt against the plans.
Most of us will be dead with repeated covid infections hammering our immune systems and leaving us with way higher chance of strokes, heart attacks and everything else.
I know this’ll be unpopular, and it doesn’t mean I’m “happy” with the situation but the idea of a long and prosperous retirement was, frankly, a short blip. Life expectancy has risen substantially since the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s meaning the average amount of “retirement years” has also risen, especially for blokes.
For context, in the 80’s avergae lif expectency was just over 70, with a retirement age of 65. I.e., you could expect ~5-6 years of retirement. It, of course, gets even starker the further back you go and the age was defined in 1948 with life expectency for a male of around 67
Now the age is only a few more years more, but people are living until their 80’s, meaning even with a retirement of 67, people are expected to have ~15 years of retirement. I.e., we’ve trippled our expectations of retirmeent over the last few decades and I don’t see how it’s sustainable.
Dunno what the answer is really
Fucking you over from the cradle to the grave.
The Tory Party
I suspect the state pension will eventually be eliminated entirely.
Retirement will be either a private pension or the dole.
And the dole will be workfare. “You’re only 78, you can scrub graffiti and stack shelves”
Born to work, not to live. Fuck you, long live business.
I guess the NHS has been doing its job too well keeping people alive until retirement age. Can’t have that now can we.
As long as the current pensioners keep their triple lock though…
Jokes on you Liz, retirement age is already past my life expectancy.
I’m currently 34 and came to terms a while back that I will probably never have the opportunity of retirement considering how much that age keeps changing while under a Conservative Government.
Most politicians run away from a third rail. Liz touched one third rail, received a nasty shock, and thought it would go better if she licked another one.
She’s literally going to be the most unpopular prime minister in history
Honestly at this point committing self unalive is my retirement plan
Not for you and your chums, eh, you fucking scumbag?
I’m not even 40 and I don’t see a future where I will be retiring before death. My dad died at 78 and my mum 70. My grandparents didn’t make it to 80 either. That’s quite sad
work until you’re on your death bed.
sincerely, the tory party.
Vote Conservative! We’ll do our damndest to make sure you die before we have to pay you the lowest pension in Europe!
Local drug dealer near me was pulled with 75k In cash in his backpack and 100k in his house… no fucking wonder so many people are selling drugs if your other option is working till your 70 to still have fuck all
Doesn’t she understand by reducing retirement age, it allows more young people to enter the job market,
It seems to work in other countries with low retirement ages…
It would be nice to have the same benefits in life as my parents. Imagine being able to retire. Even with auto enrolment, I can’t see many people being able to afford a retirement. If the average salary is 30k auto enrolment will get you to about £240k at retirement. That isn’t going to go far.
Cunt is a word only used for a small selection of people. This whole goverment can happily embrace this word
Where does Quality of Life factor in? Just because you live longer does not mean you’ll have sufficient quality of life to enjoy that “retirement”.
UK already has some of the lowest pensions in the EU. The UK is a total shit show.
just spoon feeding the austerity day by day. suggests insane tax cuts for the rich, rolls them back, and will now start implementing the little incremental changes that degrade quality of life. up next its holiday and minimum wage. once you’ve set the bar for outrage with something so completely stupid as the drastic tax cut, the rest is easy.
Why does everything seem to be on the table except taxing obscene wealth?
If they’re meant to be pro-aspirational, everything they’re doing is anti-aspirational for those at the bottom rungs
If they’re so patriotic, why are they fucking the country over and allowing their mates to pipe profits out of this country, letting them keep their huge profits and bonuses at the expense of so many
People’s lives are at stake and many have already died in recent times from their ineptitude
The way the zealots are parroting out rehearsed excuses like, it’s wholey down to the current global market, mentioning Ukraine, something had to be done about bills. Those that are so deluded they think they’re doing a good job, all the Boris defenders. Sickening. In my mind I think ‘they have to be in he minority’?! but they still keep getting in and the country is falling so far behind, in efforts to ‘be conservative’, when we need so badly to ‘be progressive’ in solutions
I get the reason for pushing back retirement. The only thing that the theory is missing is that living longer doesn’t translate to being fit enough to work. Seeing an obviously struggling older person working in McDonald’s is just depressing
Both sets of my grandparents & both my parents died before 67…. I’m never going to retire am I?
Jesus Christ I’m 30 and I feel so very done, back hurts all the time, knees are starting to get sore but still 40 years maybe more left of this?
Might start doing a breaking bad, or get a desk job…
Retirement age of 67 and above – introduced by those who have never done a hard day of physical work in their lives and who think everybody works in offices. :/
29 comments
Liz Truss has said the Government is yet to make a decision about whether it will raise the age of retirement to reduce public expenditure.
The Prime Minister was asked by journalists today whether ministers are considering raising the age of retirement to balance the public books.
In response, the Prime Minister failed to rule out raising the state pension age above 67. “You’re asking me to speculate about all kinds of decisions that haven’t yet been made,” she said.
Ms Truss added that she would “do what it takes” to fix the economy as the country grapples with soaring energy prices and inflation.
She said: “What’s first of all important is that we dealt with the energy prices people were facing. We’ve helped to curb inflation through that intervention. We’ve reduced taxes to get the economy growing.
“We’re going to be doing economic reforms in areas like moving faster with building projects, moving faster with transport projects to get the economy going. And that is what we need to do because we are facing a very difficult international situation, a slowing global economy. So yes, I will do what it takes to fix those issues.”
The state pension age is currently due to increase to 68 between 2044 and 2046, however the Government is considering bringing this forward following an independent review published earlier this year.
The review, carried out by former director general of the Confederation of British Industry, John Cridland, recommended raising the age of retirement to 68 between 2037 and 2039.
He made the recommendation due to the increasing number of people from the Baby Boomer generation reaching retirement age, along with the rise in life expectancy.
However, Caroline Abrahams, Charity Director at Age UK, said now was not the right time to raise the State Pension age.
“Raising the State Pension age improves the Government’s finances in the longer term, but there’s no objective justification for it at the moment as life expectancy has clearly stalled,” she said.
Ms Abrahams said the people who will lose out the most as a results of the changes would be “those unable to work up to their State Pension age due to ill health and caring responsibilities, as well as anyone with few or outdated qualifications who becomes unemployed in mid-life”.
She added: “As things stand, and against the context of endemic ageism in the labour market, any decision by the Government to make today’s fifty-somethings wait longer for their State Pension would be setting up hundreds of thousands of ordinary men and women for a miserable and impoverished period in their run up to retirement – a regressive and deeply regrettable step.”
Ms Truss was speaking to journalists during the third day of the Conservative Party Conference being held in Birmingham.
The Prime Minister also refused to say whether benefits will be raised in line with inflation next year amid widespread speculation that the Government is planning a real-terms cut to welfare from April 2023.
The comments come one day after the Government was forced to U-turn on its plan to introduce tax cuts for the country’s top earners following a growing Tory revolt against the plans.
Most of us will be dead with repeated covid infections hammering our immune systems and leaving us with way higher chance of strokes, heart attacks and everything else.
I know this’ll be unpopular, and it doesn’t mean I’m “happy” with the situation but the idea of a long and prosperous retirement was, frankly, a short blip. Life expectancy has risen substantially since the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s meaning the average amount of “retirement years” has also risen, especially for blokes.
For context, in the 80’s avergae lif expectency was just over 70, with a retirement age of 65. I.e., you could expect ~5-6 years of retirement. It, of course, gets even starker the further back you go and the age was defined in 1948 with life expectency for a male of around 67
Now the age is only a few more years more, but people are living until their 80’s, meaning even with a retirement of 67, people are expected to have ~15 years of retirement. I.e., we’ve trippled our expectations of retirmeent over the last few decades and I don’t see how it’s sustainable.
Dunno what the answer is really
Fucking you over from the cradle to the grave.
The Tory Party
I suspect the state pension will eventually be eliminated entirely.
Retirement will be either a private pension or the dole.
And the dole will be workfare. “You’re only 78, you can scrub graffiti and stack shelves”
Born to work, not to live. Fuck you, long live business.
I guess the NHS has been doing its job too well keeping people alive until retirement age. Can’t have that now can we.
As long as the current pensioners keep their triple lock though…
Jokes on you Liz, retirement age is already past my life expectancy.
I’m currently 34 and came to terms a while back that I will probably never have the opportunity of retirement considering how much that age keeps changing while under a Conservative Government.
Most politicians run away from a third rail. Liz touched one third rail, received a nasty shock, and thought it would go better if she licked another one.
She’s literally going to be the most unpopular prime minister in history
Honestly at this point committing self unalive is my retirement plan
Not for you and your chums, eh, you fucking scumbag?
I’m not even 40 and I don’t see a future where I will be retiring before death. My dad died at 78 and my mum 70. My grandparents didn’t make it to 80 either. That’s quite sad
work until you’re on your death bed.
sincerely, the tory party.
Vote Conservative! We’ll do our damndest to make sure you die before we have to pay you the lowest pension in Europe!
Local drug dealer near me was pulled with 75k In cash in his backpack and 100k in his house… no fucking wonder so many people are selling drugs if your other option is working till your 70 to still have fuck all
Doesn’t she understand by reducing retirement age, it allows more young people to enter the job market,
It seems to work in other countries with low retirement ages…
It would be nice to have the same benefits in life as my parents. Imagine being able to retire. Even with auto enrolment, I can’t see many people being able to afford a retirement. If the average salary is 30k auto enrolment will get you to about £240k at retirement. That isn’t going to go far.
Cunt is a word only used for a small selection of people. This whole goverment can happily embrace this word
Where does Quality of Life factor in? Just because you live longer does not mean you’ll have sufficient quality of life to enjoy that “retirement”.
UK already has some of the lowest pensions in the EU. The UK is a total shit show.
just spoon feeding the austerity day by day. suggests insane tax cuts for the rich, rolls them back, and will now start implementing the little incremental changes that degrade quality of life. up next its holiday and minimum wage. once you’ve set the bar for outrage with something so completely stupid as the drastic tax cut, the rest is easy.
Why does everything seem to be on the table except taxing obscene wealth?
If they’re meant to be pro-aspirational, everything they’re doing is anti-aspirational for those at the bottom rungs
If they’re so patriotic, why are they fucking the country over and allowing their mates to pipe profits out of this country, letting them keep their huge profits and bonuses at the expense of so many
People’s lives are at stake and many have already died in recent times from their ineptitude
The way the zealots are parroting out rehearsed excuses like, it’s wholey down to the current global market, mentioning Ukraine, something had to be done about bills. Those that are so deluded they think they’re doing a good job, all the Boris defenders. Sickening. In my mind I think ‘they have to be in he minority’?! but they still keep getting in and the country is falling so far behind, in efforts to ‘be conservative’, when we need so badly to ‘be progressive’ in solutions
I get the reason for pushing back retirement. The only thing that the theory is missing is that living longer doesn’t translate to being fit enough to work. Seeing an obviously struggling older person working in McDonald’s is just depressing
Both sets of my grandparents & both my parents died before 67…. I’m never going to retire am I?
Jesus Christ I’m 30 and I feel so very done, back hurts all the time, knees are starting to get sore but still 40 years maybe more left of this?
Might start doing a breaking bad, or get a desk job…
Retirement age of 67 and above – introduced by those who have never done a hard day of physical work in their lives and who think everybody works in offices. :/