This is not a pro or anti WASPI blog, it is a place where different people’s vies can be heard and provided they are put in a fair and reasonable way, I am happy to accommodate views on all sides of an argument. To remind ourselves, this is what the argument is about
a DWP communication on WASPI
The questions are about communication , can people make head or tails of tables like this.
Inter gender or intergenerational
Over the weekend, Steve Groves, a thoroughly good man, asked me whether I would be prepared to pay national insurance on my pension income. I don’t pay myself a lot from my companies so my pension is important to me and I had to gulp before saying “yes”, but you can’t run a blog saying “I’m prepared to pay the price of WASPI” without backing it up.
As most people don’t know, national insurance pays for two things
- The price of the state pension
- A contribution to the costs of the NHS
My personal views is that pensioners should continue to pay national insurance , albeit at a lower rate, reflecting the likelihood that they have a full 35 years pension credits for the state pension. If they haven’t , they can buy them or continue to build them up through work. I will expand on this as I’m getting help on this from friends. My point is that I don’t think that the cost of providing limited compensation to WASPI should be met by a younger generation. I do recognise that compensation is due.
This is not Steve’s position which is clearly set out on Linked in . Since it is so expertly curated on that site – I can replicate here (apologies for any omissions).
The conversation follows my publishing a blog over the weekend, suggesting that WASPI is only a partial claim for women’s rights to a better share of household pension wealth
To be fair to me, my blog was about inter-gender fairness, not about inter-generational fairness. But the WASPI argument is as much about “who pays” rather than whether compensation is due. Beverley echoes Steve Webb
If DWP refuse to pay WASPI compensation in line with Ombudsman, I think the Government has *zero* chance of winning a vote in Parliament in support of that position in an Election year
— Steve Webb (@stevewebb1) March 21, 2024
But let’s say that the WASPI women are asking this to be about the young paying their compo. Here Steve builds up a head of steam
It’s a fair point, though I have not seen much correlation between involvement in education and financial literacy.
Steve is warming to his theme
Steve uses selective examples of entitlement to argue his case and I can see there being fury if people get compensated where they have no just complaint. But this is equally the case in civil cases against banks (PPI) or against car sales firms (car finance). Blanket compensation cannot be selective, the burden of proof is too expensive to produce or to assess. Nor can we means test.
I will finish by re-emphasising my point. I believe that more women are being short-changed by men through the unfair distribution of household income (especially on divorce and separation) than women unfairly deprived of state pension.
I think this is a local problem that can better be sorted out through a tax on pensioners, which is needed anyway to fund the NHS.
Generations to come stand to benefit from the re-rating of the state pension due to the triple lock, something that I am pleased to see is under no threat from a future Conservative Government (unlikely)
Chancellor pledges to keep triple lock for the lifetime of a next Conservative Government #bbclaurak
— Henry Tapper (@henryhtapper) March 24, 2024
I’m not in favour of additional tax on pensioners. Some pensioners are rich; but many others are poor. I am in favour of additional tax on rich people, all of whom are rich.
How about a tax on rich pensioners?
Henry. Are there any ‘rich pensioners’ in the every day people in our streets? Or are those that can afford it – and already have left the UK!
I agree with Bryn Davies ie tax rich people. Stop the outrage of Capital Gains Tax rates being so much lower than Income tax rates. A capital gain is not earned by effort or hard work, it’s received for simply having capital investments that generate a payment or gain having capital. How is it justifiable to let couples invest £40,000 per year in ISAs to totally escape any CGT at all plus an annual CGT allowance. In effect this means rich couples can invest the equivalent of the joint moderate level of retirement income people need for a moderate level of income as per the PLSA Retirement Living Standards, and do this each year with zero CGT to pay. People with capital aren’t better than people who weren’t born into money, and aren’t better than people who can’t afford to build up new savings by saving such massive amounts of disposable income each year. We live in a country where the institutions of power and government protect the wealth of those born into it and the masses are persuaded that if wealth is taxed they will suffer too. I think they are already suffering now. As for the Waspi situation, I am dubious as to why a “failure” to communicate most of the changes to the State Pension Age should be singled out from all.other failures to communicate. It was announced as long ago as 1995 that the state pension age for women was being equalised to age 65 from age 60 and I find it dubious that people serious about retiring early would not be capable of preparing for that retirement by finding out more about their State Pension entitlement. The group who have more to complain about are those were affected by the far less publicised speed up in the moving of the retirement age to 66 and 67. What might be more up for debate is how women were not told about how the married woman’s stamp would stop them building up State pension. What might be up for debate is why they couldn’t get credits for children under 16 and then 12 if child benefit was claimed by the husband.
A very thought-provoking post! It’s clear that while compensation for WASPI women is necessary, the financial burden should not solely rest on younger generations. An equitable solution, possibly involving pensioners, could help address this. For more clarity on compensation, check out the Labour WASPI Compensation Calculator.
Rachel and Sir Keir say the money’s not there, but it was.
The National Insurance “Fund” (budgeted to have one-sixth of the annual benefits spend as a working balance at all times) at the last fiscal year-end was £86bn, two-thirds of annual spend, four times the budget. HM Treasury had also set aside another £6.5bn, if needed.
Waspi comp at an average of £2,950 for all of you only needs £10bn.