Single-tier pension
On 14 January 2013, the Government published a White Paper ['The single-tier pension: a simple foundation for saving'] outlining proposals to reform the State Pension into a single-tier State Pension. The White Paper also includes proposals for a regular and structured mechanism with which to consider changes to the State Pension age in the future.
On Monday 18 March, the Government announced that, subject to Parliamentary approval of the Pensions Bill, the single-tier pension will be introduced in April 2016.
The documents below reflect the position at the time they were published (which was that the single-tier pension would be introduced in April 2017 at the earliest)
- Single-tier pension: A simple foundation for saving (3.8MB)
- Single-tier pension: A simple foundation for saving (985KB) RTF
- Single-tier pension: A simple foundation for saving – Executive summary (694KB)
- Single-tier pension: A simple foundation for saving – Executive Summary (Welsh version) (1.5MB)
- Single-tier transition – technical note (144KB)
- The single-tier pension and people who have spent time in self-employment (168KB)
- Derived and inherited State Pension and the single-tier pension (244KB)
- Note on the cohort of women born between 6 April 1952 and 5 July 1953 (76KB)
This reform will affect people who reach State Pension age from the time it is introduced. Current pensioners and those reaching State Pension age prior to introduction of the single-tier pension will not be affected and will continue to receive their State Pension in line with existing rules.
These reforms will provide a foundation to support automatic enrolment launched in October last year, which will see six to nine million people saving more, or saving for the first time, into an occupational pension.
The following fact sheet gives a simple explanation of the features of the single-tier pension:
On the 18 January the Government published the draft Pensions Bill, which provides for significant reforms to both the state pension system and the bereavement benefits system and makes a number of smaller changes designed to strengthen private pension provision:
