State Retirement Pension (Hansard, 17 January 2002)

§ Mr. McCartney

The objective of the basic state pension, since it was introduced in 1948, has always been to provide a foundation for income in retirement on which individuals could build their own second pension or other savings income. The Government are committed to retaining the basic state pension in this role as well as making it easier to build up second pensions, whether through private stakeholder pensions or the new state second pension (which will particularly help people on low pay or with broken work records such as carers or disabled). In addition, the Government are committed to tackling pensioner poverty directly with the minimum income guarantee and ensuring that thrift is rewarded through the pension credit.

The information requested is as follows:

	Percentage
September 1971	20.3
November 1978	23.2
November 1981	22.4
April 1988	18.8
April 1991	18.3
April 1998	16.8
April 2001	¹—
¹ Not yet available

Note:

The percentage is based on the amount of a single person's pension

Source:

"The Abstract of Statistics for Social Security Benefits and Contributions and Indices of Prices and Earnings", 2000 edition published by the DSS, page 57.

Issue date	Consultation document
19 July 2001	Social Security Fraud Act 2001 Code of Practice on Obtaining Information
23 July 2001	Changes to Invalid Care Allowance
23 July 2001	Amending the Vaccine Damage Payments Act 1979
1 August 2001	The Occupational Pension Schemes (Winding Up Notices and Reports etc.) Regulations 2001
3 August 2001	Housing and Council Tax Benefits Verification Framework: Splitting the Verification Framework into Modules
13 August 2001	The Occupational and Personal Pension Schemes (Disclosure of Information) Amendment Regulations 2001
13 August 2001	The Occupational and Personal Pension Schemes (Consultation Document) Amendment Regulations 2001
13 August 2001	The Minimum Funding requirement—The next stage of reform