Date published: 2006/05/12
The BBC says:
A deal on pensions has been agreed between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown following months of wrangling, the prime minister has confirmed. Under the agreement, the link between the state pension and earnings will be restored - probably in 2012.
There is understood to be a deal on raising the state pension age to 68 by 2050. More details are being discussed.
...
The changes will not happen until at least 2012 - two years after the date recommended by Lord Turner's commission on pensions.And firms employing fewer than five people will not have to pay into a proposed new national pension savings scheme, the BBC understands.
Medium-sized businesses will pay half of any rate, and although there will be no discount for large companies, the changes will be phased in over three years.
Much of the new deal will be paid for by equalising the retirement age for women with men, but womens' entitlement to a pension will be based on about 30 years of contributions rather than the current 39, the BBC has been told.
But the deal is understood to mean that large tax rises in this Parliament will be avoided.
As usual, New Labour fudges the hard issues. The whole point of course is to avoid "large tax rises in this Parliament". It's the usual trick of second-rate politicians. The delay until 2012 is bad enough (of course when Brown takes over he'll probably find an excuse to delay it further). But worse, the state pension should be determined by residency, not by how many years you have allegedly worked (since child minding and all sorts of other voluntary work does not count). Instead of doing that (the only sensible way forward) it seems New Labour have gone down the idiotic route of allowing women to claim a full pension after 30 years rather than 39. Of course this is blatantly sexist. And it seems the BBC story might be misleading, since such blatant sexism is against EU law. So presumably certainly politically correct voluntary work (such as child rearing) will be counted, whether you are female or male. But having this idiotic complexity (a certain sign that Brown is involved) is what happens when dogma wins over common sense.
_________________________________________________________
All material not included from other sources is copyright cambridge2000.com.
For further information or questions email: info [at] cambridge2000 [dot] com
(replace "[at]" with "@" and "[dot]" with ".").