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.
22 Responses to “‘Abolish the state pension’: meet UKIP’s new economics spokesperson”
LB
The problem with the NI approach is that people pay in today for a pension to the government through NI (or tax as most taxes are now comingled in some way for spending purposes)
==========
Nope.
10% goes on the insurance element.
5% goes on administration charges. Shit, if a private provider was charging 5% then no doubt you would be calling for them to be shut down.
85% on pensions.
Then the actual payouts exceed the amount coming in. There is no comingling.
==========
increase the numbers of people paying tax and NI in at the bottom and raise the age of those recieving so they work longer.
==========
Raising the retirement age is defaulting on the deal. It’s ramping up the price of the state pension making it more expensive .All because its a Ponzi.
Increasing the number of people paying tax just means increasing the size of the debts in most cases. That solves nothing unless they are paying more tax than the cost of having them in the UK.
========
They include building up govt investment portfolios such as state pension funds like Singpores Temasek Dubai/ Norway.
========
Doesn’t work. As soon as Labour was in, it would be directed to invest in the likes of BL. Then the temptation to raid it to pay out more now, and less later would kick in. Just as it has to leave a 7.1 trillion debt now with no assets.
There is no solution bar default. And that means those who need the pension won’t get one.
All because its a Ponzi with a 7,100 bn debt and no assets.
treborc1
Well of course UKIP are not going to win the next election or the next or the next so they can dream up all sorts of plans for the people.
treborc1
Christ sake keep it to your self Osborne and Ball’s are listening
UKIP voter
No it’s just another non story smear
graham
Reducing the state pension would make ukip unelectable