I’ve easily found £30bn of savings, so why can’t the government do this?

Most public sector are still defined benefit, even though not final salary. And still generally far more generous than anything in the private sector.

Ok. Most of them have. I was a teacher and took my pension early a few years ago. It wasn’t final salary. I don’t think most public sector ones are now.

On income. Not capital.

Same.

Yes, I am

I used chatGPT to do the calculations.

No. It's not. It cannot do basic arithmetic.

Technically the tax will come off your occupational pension - State pension is paid without tax being deducted (at least currently)

£15k interest in 5 days? You quite sure about that?

Wrong. I'm already paying 20% tax on my occupational pension.

When I get to 67, I'll return to a higher rate tax band and 40% (or whatever the rate is by then) will come off my entire state pension which I've paid extra NI for to buy back years.

I'm not complaining about that, I've paid tax since my teens at various rates.

Anyway, turkeys don't vote for Christmas and there's no way the suggestion in the OP would happen.

And the thing is with proposals like this, is that if someone has been paying NI for 40 years and then you change the goal posts, surely they should get a refund? At least for the Pension element. Otherwise that's literally scamming people.

Sorry, haven't rtft but the state pension doesn't pay the same to everyone. I don't get the full state pension because I paid into a company pension scheme. My husband gets less state pension than me because he paid into a company pension scheme for longer than I did.

It's really not very reliable at calculations. See https://www.retable.io/blog/why-is-chatgpt-bad-at-math. It's honestly not very good at maintaining its grip on reality. See https://www.anthropic.com/research/project-vend-1 where AI insisted it was human and wearing a red tie rather than optimising pricing (which it was meant to do).

@Frugalgal strange how he’s not blasting that from the rooftops - could it be that many who vote for him are only for cuts that wouldnt actually affect them one iota

I think it would be if he tried to implement it.

Rewarding shirkers not workers. The headlines write themselves.

A ridiculous and very unfair idea. If a person has paid towards their State Pension all their working life, AND has voluntarily paid into private pension(s) in order to achieve a higher income in retirement, why on earth should they be penalised for doing so? Remember, they have foregone things in order to contribute to the private pension. It would never work.

No admin costs because they already share data, you say?

I have a disabled child who receives disability benefits (DLA). I also receive Universal Credit. Both are administered by the DWP.

When you are awarded DLA you have to inform Universal Credit on your journal what has been awarded and the date. They then have to do a manual check to verify this despite the fact it’s all administered by the DWP.

You then have to put in a manual request to get the UC increase backdated to when DLA was awarded. They won’t pay the back payment automatically. Because ANY back payment has to be approved, the case is then sent to a decision-maker. This is separate from the check to verify your child has been awarded DLA. Once the back payment is approved by a decision-maker (which can take 10-12 weeks in some cases) it’s referred to another person to “press the button” and release the payment. By the way, the back payment for DLA is always approved by the decision-maker because the delay is due to another DWP department’s backlog, not the claimant.

There’s literally no need for any of this - it’s all the same bastard department. If you’re awarded DLA there should be an automatic check for UC - a simple database enquiry would do this automatically. It would save all the manual touches and the multiple journal messages and phone calls from parents chasing this up.

If you’ve ever been in any Child DLA groups you’d appreciate not only the volume but also how many times parents have to chase both verification and payment.

Automating this should be simple as it’s all within the DWP but apparently that’s beyond their capability. Even better, they like to touch the same case multiple times rather than dealing with it all at once.

Your assertion that the DWP and HMRC could interact seamlessly with no admin is so far off the mark - quite aside from anything else, I don’t want to think what the admin costs would be for all the checks. Based on what they do for DLA/UC, it’d cost more than it saves! 😂

If they want to save cash they could just look at their current admin processes - they’d save a fortune. And I don’t just mean UC and DLA - every process is onerous with multiple unnecessary touches.

No, they haven't been gone for ages!!

I have a final salary pension. I am 55, and can take it now if I want. I haven't as I am still working. DH also has one he can take at 55 - he's a Police Officer.

I haven’t read the full thread but there’s so much focus on cutting the welfare bill rather than any other method of funding the economy.. it’s almost as if people argue only got things that they feel would cause them to gain.
OP - why should families get help with mortgages?
Why is childcare and education high on your list ..?
Because perhaps it’s your stage in life?
People who have paid NI for many years and are approaching pension age will rightly feel aggrieved by having a threat to the only benefit they are most definitely going to receive (pension).
I mean unless and until Attendance Allowance or PIP or UC becomes a benefit that they need to rely on.
It’s easy to turn to any particular benefit or any particular group of people that you aren’t currently in and think that cuts should be made for them but not you.

You are being MASSIVELY unreasonable. I am 56 and have been paying my NI for FORTY years already. And I've another 11 years to go. If anyone messed with my state pension now, I think I'd be murderous.

I do have a private pension, that I paid into for 27 years. It would place me into your 50% category. I would be wondering why, for 27 years, I had pain into that private pension, only to be penalised for it now.

It's already a total piss take, that people who haven't worked receive Pension Credit that's almost the same as the State Pension, but now you expect people who have paid in for potentially 50 years, to receive LESS than someone who has never worked or contributed. How the hell can you square that one away in your head?

What contract have you signed?

What a thunderingly ignorant post. Pensioners are taxed on income above the tax free threshold as it is, and more are paying tax now as the bands hardly move.

My DM had a tiny private pension which was about £800 a year on top of state pension, and she got attendance allowance for the final three months of her life. In her final year she paid £1000 tax on an income of just under £13,000. If she wasn't living with us her rent and bills would've had to come out of this.

You would be taxing people into poverty and the state would be picking up the bill anyway. Unless you want to just let them die or bring back workhouses.

Can’t find a single mention of that being a Reform policy at all. They seem to be instead aiming to encourage people to pay more into their own pensions.

Don’t use chat GPT. It’s horrendous for the environment. Just use a calculator!!

Over the last five days my private pension has earned £15,000 in interest, Whilst I slept, you’re gonna stop doing that are you so that you get £12,000 from the government that you perceive as being your right? 🤣🤣🤣🤣

When did they retire at 60 with final salary pensions? They’ve all been gone for ages, and you can’t claim early without taking a reduction anyway.