Is the new state pension plan fair?

The government is going to change the pension to one flat rate, is this a simpler and fairer way of planning for retirement and does it give women and the lower paid a higher amount. Also it does away with means testing and doesn't cost anymore than presently. Is it a good policy that benefits the worst off?

I think its an excellent idea and in particular will be very beneficial to single women when reaching retirment age. It also does away with the ridiculous Pension credits system, which is just another layer of bureacracy that needs to be gotten rid of.

It's designed to save the Treasury money, if that sounds like "fair" to anyone.

and younger people face the prospect of working into their seventies.

Which is totally unreasonable. The biology of aging is inescapable. Just because people may live into their 90's doesn't mean people are perfectly healthy well into their 70's.

For a good majority of people, health begins to deteriorate in their 60's, and for some, even in their 50's. It is ridiculous to think that people in their 70's will be able to keep working with any reliability. Unfortunately, many elderly workers will find themselves laid off, fired, or "let go" because they can no longer perform their duties ... and will find themselves in that horrific limbo of being unemployable yet still too young to collect their pension.

Isn't the "flat rate pension" what Beveridge wanted? Doesn't it help the lowest paid? Is it an improvement on the present model? Is it perfect absolutely not but it does help those that slip through the net and end up with nothing due to "no serps".

Which is totally unreasonable. The biology of aging is inescapable. Just because people may live into their 90's doesn't mean people are perfectly healthy well into their 70's.

Shirina. You can always be sure that anything the Tories dream up will be unreasonable at best, malevolent at worst. Workers such as teachers and nurses, not the highest paid people in the land, will have to make bigger National Insurance contributions and work longer under this scheme.

"Pensions: Teenagers will have to work until they are 77 under new government proposals"
(Someone who is 33 today can expect to be working at 73.)
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/teenagers-will-have-to-work-until-they-are-77-under-1521397

When pensions were brought originally, wasn't it aimed at people of 70 years, I don't think they lived as long then as now?

Yes. The pension started in 1909 for people over 70 - five shillings for a single person and seven and sixpence for a married couple. In one sense, they were the lucky ones, they hadn't had to contribute to the scheme, because National Insurance only started at the same time. What it's meant is that the current contributors have always been paying in for the current pensioners, not for themselves.

The age for receiving the pension was reduced to 65 in 1928. It would be nice to think that we were progressing and not regressing, and as there aren't enough jobs for young people, it seems crazy to make older ones work so much longer.

The problem with the retirement age is that the government only looks at the age we are living to not how healthy we are at that age.......

I wonder how many over 70's live fully independent lives? This group will be expected to be still working in 10 years or so time...

They are only looking at years to life not life to years......

Within the dementia unit I work in, 6 out of the 13 patients are under the age of 70 with 3 of those under the age of 65.........

The really unfair thing, to my mind, about raising the pension age is that in reality it will mostly affect people in low paid jobs, who are more likely to have health problems in later life due to work related injuries, poor living conditions, overwork, stress and worry.
People in better paid work, of course, have a pension plan, which can pay out before the state pension age, can reduce their hours once the kids have left home and the mortgage is paid off, can move over into 'consultancy' posts or simply take work at a lower rate.
Once the mortgage is paid off, living expenses are much reduced.

The Lloyds Bank defined benefit pension scheme assumes a retirement age of 60 for their staff.

http://www.lloydsbankinggroup-annualreport.com/2009/financial_statements/notes_to_the_consolidated_financial_statements/note_41/

People who have done heavy manual work all their lives may well be 'old' at 50.
Someone who works indoors, has a decent salary, regular holidays, gym membership, a decent place to live and a good diet may well not become 'old' until their '70's or later.
Perhaps we should introduce a lower pension age for people in low-paid exhausting occupations and make those whose working life is a bit 'cushier' remain in work longer.

Ivan wrote:State pension will leave 'majority worse off', experts warn

[i]Paul Johnson, the director at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), said that in the long-term “most people will end up with a lower pension than they might otherwise have thought”.

Q.E.D.

The whole notion of a pension requires the investment of more faith than might be required for a religious belief.  A 25-year old employee surrenders a chunk of their income for the next forty years to a faceless board of trustees and/or a Government which may change ten times during that working lifetime.

Santa Claus and the Tooth fairy must enjoy more credibility.

And on low wages, when even a modest family holiday is an unreachable dream, investing for the distant future seems an exercise in futility, if not an unwarrantable luxury

Futile indeed, in the face of Iain Duncan Smith's plans to work us all to death.

Not all of us - only those without a trust fund and/or a gold-plated pension fund

A flat rate pension, in theory, is the best possible answer to a matter that could never be fair on all accounts.

The lower paid will put less into the kitty and will no douibt have a far less standard of living than those putting more in.

This does not take into account private pensions for which those involved would have to finance themselves.

What it would do is give those who have worked all their lives on low incomes a better chance of enjoying their retirement.

It is a fact of life that money does not grow on trees and the money to cover pensions must come from somewhere.

More people are living longer and this has to be taken into account.

It would be impossible to maintain anything like a reasonable pension if there were more entitled than the money available and that is a fact.

There is nothing fair about life regarding work.

Some have it easy others do not, some have no health problems others have several.

There is no possible way in which to make things fair you just have to make the best possible out of that avialable.

"It is a fact of life that money does not grow on trees and the money to cover pensions must come from somewhere."

How true, polyglide. How very, very true.  The money to cover pensions comes directly from the taxes paid by those still working.

I agree and that is because of the lack of proper investment of the monies paid previously.