- The role of personal and employer pension provision and how to increase this (such as increases to AE minimum levels and measures to encourage self employed to save more for retirement).
- A fair state pension value to protect from pensioner poverty and help support a reasonable retirement, in conjunction with personal and employer provision.
- How to manage increases to state pension going forward.
This would give clarity over the objectives our state pension and private pension provision is designed to meet, give people more certainty over their expected state pension at retirement and change the debate from the relevance of short-term state pension increases to the purpose and overall value it provides.
Now was not the time to tweak the triple lock. The increased income that it provides right now, especially to deal with the high cost of living, will have been desperately needed by pensioners, particularly those on low incomes.
Changes to the triple lock, or the state pension, should not be made in a piecemeal way.
Once the state pension is at a more meaningful level for the pensioners relying on it, the mechanism of ensuring fair but affordable increases must be addressed.
Deep-rooted reforms that consider the interaction of pension savings, tax, and other benefits including care are needed.
Paul Waters is head of DC markets at Hymans Robertson
