Readers say overseas aid should be suspended – NOT pension triple lock

Pressure: Readers say PM Rishi Sunak must protect pensions

Readers are adamant that the triple lock state pension guarantee must be honoured in the Autumn Budget – despite the poor health of the Government’s finances. 

Last week, we invited readers to suggest how Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt could plug the enormous £50billion black hole in the nation’s finances. The Government will reveal its plans on November 17. Numerous clever ideas were put forward to cut Government spending. Most called for a reduction in annual overseas aid, currently set at a figure equivalent to 0.5 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product. 

Some also believe it is time to axe unfunded public sector pension schemes where taxpayers are often required to part-fund the pensions paid to retirees. Such deluxe, defined benefit pension schemes are now a rarity in the private sector because they are so expensive for companies to maintain. 

Yet, when it comes to the triple lock guarantee and the state pension, the view is almost universal: the Government must stick to the guarantee and ratchet up the state pension in April next year by the higher of inflation, 2.5 per cent, or earnings. This would mean a 10.1 per cent increase. The Government has yet to confirm whether the increase will be introduced. 

Pat McLaughlin, from Ringwood in Hampshire, says overseas aid should be suspended until the country is out of the financial mire it finds itself in. But the triple lock state pension guarantee, he says, must be upheld, especially after it was broken last year in light of the strong bounceback in earnings after furlough and lockdown. 

Then Chancellor, Sunak said the 8 per cent increase it should have given pensioners was unaffordable as the economy lurched out of lockdown.

Pat, 71, who used to run an exhibition and events company with his wife Judy, says Ministers should stop looking at the state pension as ‘a benefit’. He adds: ‘The pension is payback for years of hard graft and diligently paying our National Insurance contributions. It’s outrageous that the Government can rip up such an important guarantee at will. I accepted its decision to suspend the pension guarantee last year, but I will not if it does it again. I will never vote Conservative again and I am sure I am not alone among grey voters when I say that.’ 

He has already told his local Conservative MP, Sir Desmond Swayne, of his intention. 

Clive Edgley, a 72-year-old former director of a building materials company from near Stockport, Greater Manchester, agrees. He says: ‘Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt have an opportunity to restore credibility in the Conservative Government for ordinary voters like me – a pensioner of modest means, but with a traditional view of the world based on integrity and honesty. This includes honouring the triple lock pension guarantee.’ 

Clive, who is married to Susan and has three children and seven grandchildren, admits he is better off than many retired people. He has a ‘small’ company pension to supplement his state pension. ‘There are many pensioners worse off than me,’ he says, ‘and who have no other source of income other than their state pension. The Government must support them by paying the increase under the terms of the triple lock.’ 

Clive also believes it is time to reduce or suspend overseas aid, which currently totals about £11billion a year. 

Janet Stevens, from near Heathrow in Middlesex, worked in marketing for 40 years. She believes the Conservatives will lose the pensioners’ vote if they don’t honour the triple lock. 

Janet, 73, keeps herself fit and busy doing lots of voluntary work. ‘I’m lucky,’ she says. ‘I’ve got a couple of small pensions and no mortgage to pay. But there are plenty of people who are dependent upon the state pension to make their household finances work. A promise is a promise and the Government should honour it.’ 

Gary Williams, a 63-year-old retired chartered accountant, from near Sherborne in Somerset, believes the Government would be justified in reducing the inflation-linked increase to the state pension to take account of the payments it has made to pensioners under its cost-of-living support scheme. All pensioners, he says, have received help with their energy bills (like all households) while eight million have received additional pensioner specific cost-of-living payments. 

Gary says: ‘These payments will reduce the impact of inflation on many pensioners’ household budgets, so should be taken into account when the Government works out the increase in state pension from next April.’

With regards to Government revenue-raising, retired management consultant Richard Lumb says windfall taxes on both oil and gas companies and banks are in order. Sunak and Hunt are reportedly planning a big tax grab on energy firms as their profits boom. In the last few days, BP said it made $8.2billion (£7.1 billion) of profit between July and September, more than double for the same period last year. 

On oil and gas companies, 67- year-old Richard, from Keyworth in Nottinghamshire, says a ‘huge windfall tax is appropriate’. 

With regards to banks, he says: ‘They have behaved appallingly over the past few years, paying virtually nothing to savers and making tens of billions of pounds of profits in the process.’ 

He adds: ‘Every time the bank base rate increases, as it did on Thursday by 0.75 percentage points, they do little for savers. It is insulting. The banks should also be punished for closing the last branches in communities such as in my large village.’ 

Gold-plated public sector pension schemes should be phased out according to Robin Ede, from near Bournemouth. The 79-year-old retired financial adviser says it is crazy that taxpayers often have to support the payments made to pensioners of these schemes if there is a shortfall between pension contributions from employees and payments to those in retirement. 

He asks: ‘Is it not time that these schemes were closed? Then, all of us, whether working in the public or private sector, would have our future pensions determined by how much we put in and stock market performance. It would bring about a sense of togetherness, rather than the prevailing ‘them and us’ view on pensions.