The Government should keep the triple lock and instead put much more effort and imagination into finding ways of keeping older people in the workforce – so they will pay more tax to help narrow the fiscal deficit. That’s the counter argument to the current wave of calls to scrap the lock, advanced by economics commentator Hamish McRae in the ipaper*. Recent hikes in National Insurance “which is supposed to pay for it” more than cover the extra cost in pensions, he says. And while ending it now and just linking pensions to earnings and inflation might save £5bn a year by 2030 it wouldn’t fix the yawning gap that the Chancellor faces in his Budget. “The tragedy is that there is a way though the issue, a win-win solution. That is to encourage older people to stay longer in the workforce, contributing to the total tax take, and in addition experiencing better health outcomes from continuing to be employed. The number of over 65s in paid work has increased by a million since 2000.” So let’s stop this destructive debate, he writes. But to up the number of people working past retirement age requires the young and old to get along. “You cannot have a harmonious workplace where people sneer at each other – with the young resenting older people because they think, rightly or wrongly, that they had it easy, and resenting paying their pensions, and the old thinking that young people are snowflakes compared with what they had to put up with when they started out.”
*This article is behind a pay wall.
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