It’s a numbers game…
According to our latest, recently revised projections, under our reforms someone on low income who retires in 2050 with a full contribution record can expect to get £145 from the state pension in 2007/08 earnings terms. This is almost 20% more than a similar person retiring today can expect.
My last entry on this blog was about new statistics that the Department has produced and so is today’s entry. I may be in danger of overloading this page with numbers but these revisions to our long-term estimates of the costs and outcomes of our reforms are particularly pertinent as the debate on the Pensions Bill begins in the House of Lords next week with 2nd Reading on Monday.
So why have our estimates changed? Well, as with most long term estimates they haven’t remained static over time – in this case they’ve been affected by new data we’ve received on earnings and inflation, not to mention assumptions on future rates of economic and price growth set out in this year’s Budget (for those of you interested in that sort of thing these are set out in Chapter B of the Financial Statement and Budget Report).
So today we’ve published a factsheet that not only takes account of this new data but equally importantly presents our estimates in today’s money, i.e. in 2007/08 terms.
None of these revisions change the arguments for our reforms, but they do change some of the detailed numbers we will be using, and will allow a better comparison between benefit levels in the future and those today.
I hope you’ll agree that as far as statistics go, these are definitely worth adding to others here on my blog.
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This entry was posted on Friday, May 11th, 2007 at 1:32 PM by James Purnell and categorized in General posts.