Tag Archives: national insurance

My post-Budget article for the Radix thinktank considers the future of the State Pension in the light of the Chancellor's changes to National Insurance. The headline news in the Budget was a 2p cut in the main rate of National Insurance contributions for employed and self-employed people. This was the second such cut, the first being in the Autumn statement. And the Chancellor expressed an intention to go much further. He trailed the idea of abolishing personal National Insurance...

There's yet another bizarre claim doing the rounds in Waspiland. Or, more correctly, among the hardline Back to 60 fringe of the broader women's state pension movement. I try to ignore most of the ridiculous claims made by Back to 60 campaigners, because they aren't going to listen to me and I will simply end up with a sore head and a very frayed temper. But this one is more complex - and confusing - than most, and it doesn't only affect women. So it is worth explaining. As always, the story...

The NI Fund discussed in this post covers England, Wales and Scotland only. Northern Ireland has a separate NI Fund, which is excluded from the figures given in this post. However, it works in exactly the same way as the Fund discussed here. Sometimes the government is its own worst enemy. HM Treasury's hamfisted response to this Freedom of Information request from Trudy Baddams of the pension rights campaign group "We Paid In, You Paid Out", has caused a very silly storm.Ms Baddams...

The NI Fund discussed in this post covers England, Wales and Scotland only. Northern Ireland has a separate NI Fund, which is excluded from the figures given in this post. However, it works in exactly the same way as the Fund discussed here. Sometimes the government is its own worst enemy. HM Treasury's hamfisted response to this Freedom of Information request from Trudy Baddams of the pension rights campaign group "We Paid In, You Paid Out", has caused a very silly storm.Ms Baddams...

Some things just make me furious. This post by David Hencke, for example. In it, he claims that politicians of all three main parties agreed to raise the state pension age for women to compensate for the ending of the Treasury's contribution to the National Insurance fund. This isn't true.Not only is it untrue, but it directly contradicts the research upon which the article relies, and dishonours the memory of a man who fought hard for pensioners' rights.Hencke based his article on this...

The last published accounts for the NI Fund show that, contrary to popular mythology, it does not have an enormous surplus. In fact it is currently running a deficit, as it has been for the last five years. Its reserves have fallen to the point where the Government was forced to top them up to prevent them falling below the statutory minimum of 1/6 of payments out of the fund. So I was somewhat surprised to read written evidence to the Work and Pensions Select Committee which appeared to...

There is a great deal of confusion over National Insurance - what it is, how it works and what it funds. I have attempted to clear up some of the muddle elsewhere. But partly, it stems from the existence of something called the NI Fund. If there is a Fund, surely this implies that National Insurance contributions are invested? If so, those (like me) who insist that state pensions are unfunded are talking gibberish.There is indeed a NI Fund. But it is badly named. It would be more accurate to...