The proposal has been dismissed as "incoherent" and "bizarre" by pensions experts.
Considering UKIP’s electoral base is largely drawn from the over-60s, you would think the party would have a carefully tailored set of policy proposels to woo this section of the electorate.
The importance of the so-called ‘grey vote’ is recognised by the three major parties, and is evident in the way they assiduously court older voters. Young people have felt the burden of the recession more than most yet last week’s budget gave the biggest boost to pensioners. And it makes sense that politicians behave in this fashion: older people vote, after all, whereas young people very often don’t.
Someone ought to tell UKIP’s new economics spokesperson this, however.
As well as suggesting that solar panels should be installed on pensioners’ homes (presumably to tackle the man-made climate change they don’t believe exists) and that the Bank of England should be abolished, UKIP’s new economics guru Steven Woolfe has called for the abolition of the state pension and its replacement with a private system.
The proposal has been dismissed as “incoherent” and “bizarre” by pensions experts.
Commenting on Woolfe plan, head of pensions research at Hargreaves Lansdown Tom McPhail said:
“There is nothing like a coherent and well-thought through retirement policy; and this is nothing like a coherent pensions policy,” Lansdown said.
Think tank Strategic Society Centre director James Lloyd also called the hairbrain scheme “bizarre”:
“This would take hundreds of years of strict public finances to have an impact. It is bizarre UKIP could be going after the state pension when its core voters are pensioners.”
As a result UKIP has already sought to distance itself from Woolfe, claiming his ideas were “never party policy and are not under consideration”.
Not that this is the first UKIP policy that’s bizarre or incoherent, of course.
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22 Responses to “‘Abolish the state pension’: meet UKIP’s new economics spokesperson”
Chris Kitcher
What a load of complete fuck**g morons, as ever.
keeshond
Is UKIP planning to abolish pensions? Please answer the question.
Alec
Not to mention national insurance.
~alec
Cole
I guess they’re going to whinge about smears rather than tell us…
Steven Woolfe
Ian, Cole, Keeshond, Chris and Swatnan. Thank you for raising what are obvious concerns and relevant questions. When this particular series of articles were raised concerning comments that attributed to me the view that either (a) I wanted personally to abolish the State Pension or (b) it was UKIPS policy to do so I was advised that it is best just left alone otherwise it creates more of a story. However, the initial article that made reference to this view seems to be taking on all new meanings and didnt reflect my views.
Firstly, to answer your questions it is not, nor have it ever been UKIP’s policy to abolish the state pension or pensions.
Secondly, I have serious concerns that we currently have serious pensioner poverty and under the current UK pension system not only will things get worse I think we could be heading for a more serious crisis in not too many years ahead. Having worked in businesses that are involved in the pensions and savings sector for over 15years I have seen lots of ideas about how this problem maybe solved/ improved. In a conversation with a journalist, who discussed a speech I made on a number of issues two years ago and before I was UKIP Economic spokesman, I mentioned some of the ideas which I thought could help. I also said that these were personal ideas which I hoped to put in a book, if I got time to finish it and then could be peered tested, reviwed, criticised to see if they had any chance of working.
I didnt espouse a view of abolishing the state pension, indeed I actually mentioned that it needed to be enhanced/ structurally changed, but if the ideas worked this could be done over a medium lentgh of time and it looked like the amount central government put into the overall state pension pot would reduce over that time period. With pensions it can take many years or even in some circumstances decades for some things to start to work. It isnt necessarily a quick fix. Sadly the journalist took what were ideas, as yet in partially researched form or peer tested, and what I now know is important to say off/on the record and printed them to gain a good story. Thats life and I am beginning to get how the media thing works and it is no point getting angry with people just doing their job. By the way Tony I am not going to say the journalist, who initaily wrote the piece, wanted to smear me, he may have got the wrong end of the stick and that happens. There certainly are some journalists who fall in that category and I am certainly not blaming Left Foot Forward for reproducing those arguments, which had become public domain matters.
My explanantion may not satisfy all your questions and hopefully I will get round to writing an article on the ideas and then I could look forward to your comments on that.