The cynical might say that newly arrived in power and with five years ahead in which bad stuff can be forgotten, the decision to keep the ‘triple lock’ in place might have been otherwise. Ensuring that the state pension goes up in line with the worst/best measure of inflation is expensive, but then so would be the votes lost by watering it down or scrapping it. Particularly as other benefits designed to ‘end pensioner poverty’, pension credits and the like have been watered down since G Brown introduced them. And those left are devilishly difficult and require huge amounts of patience to claim, as anyone who’s tackled the forms and ‘phone calls will tell you. At least once you have your state pension, you have it. For now.
“Record year for annuity sales driven by advisers”
I was asked this week whether annuities are now ‘a good investment’. They’ve been recommended very rarely in recent years, since ‘pension freedoms’ allowed pretty much unlimited drawdown on pension funds and anything left to be passed on to beneficiaries free of Inheritance Tax.