MPs call to end the ‘triple lock’ on pensions as it ‘protects well-off boomers at expense of working families’
Cross-party report highlights how millennials, born between 1981 and 2000, face being the first generation in modern times to be financially worse off than their predecessors
THE triple-lock pension should be scrapped because it protects well-off baby boomers at the expense of working families, MPs say.
The post-war generation is benefiting from a “skewed” economy concentrating wealth in their hands, mainly home ownership, a report warns.
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Millennials, born between 1981 and 2000, face being the first generation in modern times to be financially worse off than their predecessors, the report says.
Under the triple-lock, state pensions rise by the rate of inflation, average earnings or 2.5 per cent whichever is highest. But the cross-party report says it should not continue beyond 2020 because pensioners are placing a “strain” on those in work while being protected from public spending cuts.
With rising life expectancy, the Commons work and pensions committee wants a new earnings link for the state pension agreed before the next general election.
Chairman Frank Field said: “No party has been immune from chasing the pensioner vote but at what cost to future generations?”
Former Welfare Secretary Iain Duncan Smith and ex-Pensions Minister Ros Altmann have already called for the costly system to be abolished.