Ah well, that explains it… my NHS pension was due today but was paid on Friday instead.
Coffey said “We’ll be looking at what is happening with earnings and that’ll guide us on what happens on the pensions rise given to pensioners next year.
“I know we need to be driven by the data.”
Here we go again. 
Uh-oh.
Look on the bright side. firms in UK are giving golden hellos to certain sections of employment because those who used to do those jobs have gone back home to Eastern Europe.
BoJo has to either, allow them all back in again and what does that mean for his Brexit policy, or to allow wage inflation.
Inflation means higher pensions for us.
Maybe not if they do away with the triple lock.
It appears that a 2 year suspension of the triple lock is almost certain. For me the problem is, that a suspension in political terms usually means permanent. The subject of the state pension is a minefield. Some interesting views here. - Simple tweak could fix pension triple lock dilemma | Money Marketing
But OTOH as the OBR suggests in a linked article, the Treasury could be in for an unexpected “bonus”…
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I wonder if they will pass the bonus on, or just conveniently ignore it. Being a cynic, I suspect the latter.
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The private pensions industry - believe it or not - has been baying for the triple lock to be removed, reduced or not applied, ever since Covid began. They are mostly fat cats that live off the pension savings of other people so I consider that a bit of a cheek.
Baroness Ros Altmann, however, pointed out yesterday that the UK state pension is still by quite a wide gap the worst amongst developed countries [the triple lock was set up as a slow escalator towards bringing the UK state pension in line intended to work through years and Parliaments over time] and is still considerably below the minimum level of income for a pensioner that the UK public views as a decent minimum.
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I think many of us on here know that Karen!!! 
The pension pays for the cat food
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Typical of this nasty Tory government.
The UK has one of the worst pensions in Europe.
An 8% rise would have closed that gap.
Wonder what rise the MPs will get?
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I view it as the British establishment’s prejudicial treatment of women OAP’s in particular. Just in my recent lifetime i’ve seen this 3 ways.
- Statistically most very long-lived pensioners are women. State Pensions , which people worked all their lives to earn have been frozen for pensioners as soon as they spend retirement years in many other countries. Including countries with close links to the UK such as Australia. The UK govt has refused to uprate these earned pensions. So we have 97 year old widows who in the UK would still keep their full pension at current rates being paid amounts like 0.97p per week for a lifetime of their and/or their husbands’ work for a full pension because they are drawing their earned UK State pension in Australia rather than cold windy Blackpool.
Do you trust the British government to honour any current promises in the future? Regardless of in which country you may take the State pension you have earned?
- There was no cushioning/phased introduction of the sudden change of retirement age from 60 to 65. Women born in the 50’s have been very severely affected. Some people not much more than 2 years apart in age are receiving 6 years less or more pension for similar working lives. None of this was introduced in a phased way nor notified correctly. The last switch from 65 to 66 retirement affecting women was brought forward without notice, after already lacking fair notice on the loss of pension from 60 to 65.
“It’s only women” means worse treatment and “we’ll just ignore complaints”. This attitude is not just the Tories. It’s the British establishment.
Equalisation of retirement ages was fair but particular ages of women have been treated badly in the way it was implemented.
- Has the government admitted yet how much money it has saved ongoing by killing off so many elderly people in care homes or who received contaminated care services in Covid? Out of the 150 000 odd Covid deaths so far, guessing those over 65 killed by the UK government’s poor practices I am sure well over half were women. So that makes it matter less?
And if the social care levy starts at 2.5% it will go on and up. Fewer pensioners to pay earned pensions to
because of so many killed prematurely by the government’s poor practices, is a windfall for today that will soon be swallowed up. So in due course the government will start ratcheting up from this 2.5%. Just like the water rates did as soon as they were separated from local taxation (the rates).
Most importantly of all, did Boris promise the money from this new tax will be hypothecated? (=ringfenced for social care plus the incompetently managed wasteful black hole that is the NHS?). Er…Nope.
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You’ve missed one! Not just sudden 5 year increase in pension age for women, but the jump from needing 30 years full contributions to 35. So you need to find a job (easy for 60 yr old women…) for those extra 5 years too or not only get a delayed pension but get a much smaller one than anticipated.
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Let’s not forget that in most cases, widows can no longer ‘inherit’ their husband’s state pension.
The best that my wife can expect is 50% of the Protected Payment element of my pension.
Not even an 8.8% rise that was indicated by the measures used, if given, would bring the developed world’s close-to-worst pension up to where the triple lock was brought in to bring it.
Neither to Baroness Ros Altmann’s statement of the absolute minimum the public view as decent, nor to the £17-18k pa the pensions industry calculates as the minimum for decency, nor to what the state pension was worth in 1970 in terms of real wages equivalent before successive Labour and Tory governments let inflation and wages rise leaving pensioners behind. Which the triple lock was meant to continue through several Parliaments and even changes of government to remedy, to re-establish fairness and decency. Meanwhile the UK state pension gap widens with the rest of the developed world. Including some countries where living costs are also cheaper than the UK as well as pensions having more decency.
Btw I don’t think it would have been fair to include post-pandemic uptick and post-furlough wage corrections in the triple lock this year. But breaking the wages connection even temporarily is worrying. Even if anyone thought current Tory leaders and the DWP - in particilar -worthy of trust.
Although I agree with Karen the basic problem is that the UK pension scheme (and, I suspect, most national pensions) is a Ponzi scheme at heart.
You pay in, that pays the pensions of those currently receiving them. When your turn comes you hope that there are enough contributions to cover your pension.
There is no pot of money that is built up to which you are “entitled” (however much people seem to think there is).
When the National Insurance Act 1946 was passed male life expectancy was around 62 in the UK. In fact the presumption was that most people would not live to claim their pension - it genuinely was “insurance” - insurance against being alive in one’s 60’s but too ill to work.
Nowadays male life expectancy is about 79 (female just under 83) meaning the average is that people will be in receipt of a pension for 12-14 years.
We can have an £18k pension in the UK but would need to raise the equivalent of doubling NI - given the backlash to a 1.25% hike I’m not sure that this would exactly be popular.
Of course there are better ways of raising funds for social care (especially as they are not going to social care) than increasing NI in the way that the government has done which, in percentage terms, falls disproportionately on the low paid but the Tories have always shied away from taxing their supporters if they can help it.
Nevertheless the fact remains that to square the circle of better pensions in the UK revenue will have to be raised somehow - and, historically, UK subjects have objected to higher taxes for increased social benefits (UK subjects are stupid, of course).
There is quite a bit of progress that has been made for younger and mid-career workers. Don’t you think the fact that for quite some years now, most employers have had to offer a pension scheme to staff whose admin does not cost the employee, into which the employer has had to put 3% of salary (going up soon) and the employee 5%, is wonderful? Decent employers are contributing more and doing things like matching extra contributions if the employee pays in extra.
I know there is a problem with some very low paid employees currently locked out due to a technicality but this is fantastic for the majority of workers now. But those approaching retirement and in retirement now were not so lucky unless they were professional classes or high level employees, civil servants or with particularly generous employers. And the average working millions weren’t in those categories so they only have the state pension.
So thr Ponzi scheme is being addressed for the future with these requirements and some very generous tax breaks for pension contributions. However for many these reforms came far too late and they need the state pension they contributed all their working lives to, in many cases 50 years of work, to be fair and decent instead of what it has become.