I am 70 years old, retired and receiving the State Pension. Apparently, that now makes me part of the problem.
We are repeatedly told that younger workers are paying for our pensions, that the triple lock is unsustainable and that the country can no longer afford to support people as it once did.
Meanwhile, I am wondering whether I should renew my rugby season ticket or take my wife out for an occasional pub meal. When my energy supplier wanted to increase my monthly payment by around £80, I even found myself looking at the light bulbs and wondering what else we could stop using.
These are not luxury cruises or expensive cars. They are modest parts of an ordinary retirement after half a century of work.
The triple lock was first applied in the 2011–12 financial year. For 15 years it has supposedly been making the State Pension increasingly generous. Yet in 2026–27, the full new State Pension is £241.30 a week. Spread across a notional 35-hour week, that is £6.89 an hour.
A worker aged 21 or over receiving the legal minimum of £12.71 an hour earns £444.85 gross for 35 hours. The full new State Pension is therefore only 54% of that gross weekly wage—basically half. Retirement is not literally a job paid by the hour, and tax treatment differs, but the comparison puts the amount into language people understand.
That is what needs to be remembered whenever the triple lock is presented as extravagant. After 15 years of this protection, a qualifying pensioner receiving the full new State Pension still lives on only a little more than half the gross earnings of somebody working 35 hours at the lowest legal adult wage. Many pensioners receive less than the full amount.
I do not expect to be paid as much in retirement as I earned at work. I do expect to live with dignity—and I refuse to feel guilty for receiving the pension I spent a working lifetime supporting.
I Understand Why Younger People Are Angry
I am not blind to the advantages my generation had.
I left school at 15 and started earning. My mum was raising three children without much money, so my wage allowed me to pay her something, buy clothes and enjoy a pint after work. It gave me a degree of independence that many young people cannot obtain from an entry-level wage today.
I later returned to education without tuition fees or a mountain of debt. Grants were available that did not have to be repaid. Education was treated as an investment in the person and the country, not as an expensive product sold to a customer.
I bought a house costing about two and a half times my annual salary without a deposit. Try doing that today.
Even after divorce left me in serious debt in my early fifties, hard work still offered a route back. I worked extremely long hours, cleared the debts, paid off my mortgage and eventually retired at 66.
I worked for what I have, but honesty requires me to acknowledge something else: my hard work took place in an economy where hard work could still lead to security.
Many young people work hard today but remain trapped by high rents, student loans, inadequate wages and insecure hours. They cannot save a deposit because merely existing consumes their income. I understand their anger.
What I do not accept is that their anger should be directed at me.
I did not create the housing shortage, set tuition fees or allow rents and property prices to race ahead of earnings. Making my pension smaller will not build a house or remove a graduate's student-loan balance.
I do not think my generation deserved less. I think younger generations deserve more of the opportunities that we had.
A Pension Is Not Charity
Today's workers help fund today's State Pension, just as my generation helped fund the pensioners who came before us. That is a continuing social agreement between generations, not a personal act of charity from a young worker to an older stranger.
I paid tax and National Insurance throughout my working life. Employers also made National Insurance contributions connected with my employment. I know those payments were not placed in a private pot with my name on it. They supported the country and its pensioners at the time.
I kept my side of that social agreement. So did millions of other pensioners.
There can be a legitimate debate about how pensions should be funded, but that debate must begin with an honest definition of adequacy. Is the State Pension meant only to prevent immediate destitution, or should it allow an older person to participate modestly in society?
The triple lock can be reviewed; no policy should be beyond examination. But replacing it without first deciding what an adequate pension is risks turning a modest income into an increasingly inadequate one.
If wealthy pensioners should contribute more, progressive taxation is the honest way to achieve it. Weakening the basic State Pension relied upon by people with little else is a blunt instrument that hits very different pensioners with the same hammer.
“But You Own Your Home”
Some people will point out that I own a home worth approximately £189,000 and say that means I have money.
A house is not a weekly income.
I cannot exchange a few roof tiles for a bag of shopping or use the spare bedroom to pay the electricity bill. The house gives my wife and me something essential: a secure place to live without paying a landlord every month.
What are we expected to do—sell it and rent a suitable home for around £1,000 a month, with the rent rising year after year?
That would convert permanent housing security into a diminishing pot of capital. Eventually, we could be left with neither the savings nor the house.
Downsizing is right for some people, but it must be a choice. Smaller accessible properties are not always substantially cheaper, and moving involves fees, costs and upheaval.
Then there is social care. A friend of mine has faced care costs exceeding £1,000 a week. I accept that care must be funded and that people with resources may be expected to contribute, but there is still no general lifetime cap on eligible care costs in England. We need an honest settlement rather than leaving people uncertain whether frailty will consume everything they built.
I did not pay off my mortgage so I could call myself wealthy. I did it so I would not face housing insecurity in retirement.
“Just Make People Work Longer”
Another apparently simple answer is to keep raising the State Pension age.
That may work on a government spreadsheet, but human beings are not identical figures in a column.
My job was sedentary in many ways, yet by 65 I felt battle-weary. I had worked for around half a century, including years of exceptionally long hours, and I had developed health conditions. I was glad to retire at 66.
If somebody with a largely sedentary job can feel like that, what about people who have spent their lives lifting, building, driving, nursing, policing or fighting fires? Do we genuinely want people in safety-critical and physically punishing roles compelled to carry on when their bodies and concentration are telling them it is time to stop?
Parliament's Work and Pensions Committee has warned that pension-age increases affect people unequally. It reported that 57% of people were no longer in paid employment during the year before reaching State Pension age. People in poorer areas, manual workers, carers and those experiencing ill health may be less able to continue working—and may also live fewer years to receive their pension.
Longer life expectancy on a national chart does not mean everybody has gained the same number of healthy years.
Off Benefits and Into What?
The same human reality is missing from much of the debate about welfare.
If you are unemployed, you are called lazy. If you are disabled, you can be treated as a burden. If illness or difficult circumstances damage your mental health, somebody accuses you of “swinging the lead.” If you are working but struggling, you are told to budget better.
Of course fraud exists and should be investigated. People who can work should be expected and helped to take reasonable opportunities. But wrongdoing by a minority cannot justify treating millions of people with suspicion.
Reform UK has proposed requiring certain work-capable Universal Credit claimants who have been receiving benefits for more than 12 months to complete 20 hours of council-organised community work each week.
The obvious question is: off benefits and into what?
Official figures for April to June 2026 showed approximately 2.5 unemployed people for every vacancy. There cannot be one job for every unemployed person when there are two and a half people competing for each opening.
If councils can identify 20 hours of useful work cleaning streets, maintaining parks and completing minor repairs, that work has economic value. Why is it not a properly paid council job with wages, holiday entitlement and a pension? How will compulsory benefit labour be prevented from displacing employees who would otherwise be paid?
And if somebody's benefit is stopped, what happens next?
Their need for food, warmth and shelter does not disappear. They miss rent, accumulate debt, rely on food banks or relatives, go without essentials and become vulnerable to exploitation. A sanction may reduce a line in a government account, but it does not remove the human need represented by that line.
When Employment Does Not Provide a Living
We have already experienced job losses and greater insecurity. Some extremely profitable companies employ people for 20 hours a week at the minimum wage or slightly above it.
What is a person supposed to build upon 20 low-paid hours?
Depending on rent, children, a partner's income and other circumstances, Universal Credit may help support that worker's household. The payment goes to the claimant, not directly to the company, but the arrangement can still help sustain an employment model that provides insufficient income.
The public carries part of the risk while the company retains the profit.
Not every employer paying the minimum wage is exploiting workers. Small businesses face genuine costs, and some employees actively want part-time flexibility. But choosing reduced hours is entirely different from wanting full-time work and being offered only 20.
When a working person needs benefits because their employer will not provide enough hours or income, blaming the worker will not reduce the welfare bill. Addressing inadequate pay, insecure hours and excessive housing costs might.
High private rents are especially important. Housing support is recorded as welfare paid to a claimant, yet much of it ultimately reaches a landlord. We blame the tenant while failing to build enough social and genuinely affordable housing.
The welfare bill is not merely the cost of people refusing to work. It is partly the cost of an economy in which employment and housing no longer provide security.
Profits Are Private, but the Costs Become Public
There is nothing inherently wrong with profit. Businesses need to succeed, invest and employ people. I spent part of my career in management, so I understand that a company cannot survive indefinitely while losing money.
But something is wrong when private reward is protected while human and social costs are transferred to the public.
If a large employer pays wages that do not support a basic life, taxpayers help support some of its workers. If it offers insecure hours, the worker and the welfare system carry the risk when work is unavailable. If it replaces employees with technology, the business keeps the saving while the public supports those who lose their jobs.
The profits remain private, but the consequences become public.
Why is the claimant described as a burden before the business model is questioned? Why is benefit fraud pursued with moral outrage while sophisticated tax avoidance is too often discussed as though it were merely clever planning?
Businesses benefit from educated employees, roads, healthcare, policing, courts and a stable society. In return, profitable companies should contribute fairly to maintaining the foundations upon which their success depends.
What Happens When AI Takes More Jobs?
Artificial intelligence makes this question urgent.
Some younger people criticising today's pensioners may never receive the opportunity to contribute through 40 or 50 years of continuous employment as my generation did. That will not necessarily be because they are unwilling to work. Jobs may disappear or change repeatedly around them.
We cannot celebrate companies replacing workers with technology and then condemn the displaced workers for becoming unemployed.
AI will create occupations as well as remove them, but there is no guarantee that new jobs will appear in the correct places, in sufficient numbers or in time for those displaced. A specialist technology job is no immediate answer to an administrator, shop worker or customer-service employee whose livelihood has vanished.
If AI creates more wealth using fewer workers, society will have to reconsider how that wealth supports pensions, public services and the people whose labour is no longer required. Part of the gain from automation should fund retraining, transition support and the communities bearing the disruption.
Otherwise, we will create greater prosperity at the top, insecurity below and then blame the victims for the resulting welfare bill.
Contribution Is More Than a Wage Slip
Our economic language also ignores enormous amounts of unpaid contribution.
People care for ill or disabled partners, elderly parents, relatives and grandchildren. That work can be exhausting, restrict paid employment and save public services substantial expense.
Yet because no employer issues a wage slip, it can become almost invisible.
A person's value cannot be measured solely by current economic output. At different points in life, any of us may be a worker, taxpayer, parent, carer, patient, claimant or pensioner. A decent society recognises the contribution and dignity present in all those roles.
Inflation Is Down—but Prices Are Not
Politicians tell us that inflation is around 3%, while households look at their bills and wonder what country that figure describes.
The statistic is not necessarily false. The way it is communicated is frequently misleading.
An annual inflation rate of 2.9% means the general level of measured prices is 2.9% higher than it was 12 months earlier. It does not mean prices have increased by only 2.9% since 2022. All the earlier increases remain embedded.
It is like being told that a car has slowed down without being told how far it has already travelled.
Food prices had risen by nearly 31% between April 2022 and June 2026. Average water and sewerage bills in England and Wales rose from £419 in 2022–23 to £639 in 2026–27—an increase exceeding 52%. Average English Band D council tax rose from £1,965 in 2022–23 to well over £2,300.
Using an illustrative household grocery basket costing £100 a week in 2022, groceries, water and average Band D council tax together have risen by close to 30% over four years.
That is the gap between the headline and the household.
People on modest incomes spend a large share of their money on essentials. If food, water, council tax or energy rises faster than the overall index, their personal experience is worse than the headline rate suggests.
“Inflation is down” does not mean prices are down. It means prices are rising more slowly from a much higher starting point.
I Challenged My Energy Increase
People need collective political action, but we must also act independently when companies make demands that do not appear justified.
When EDF proposed raising my monthly Direct Debit from £230.89 to £311.15—almost 35%—I did not automatically cancel my rugby season ticket or stop taking my wife for an occasional meal.
I contacted the company and said plainly that I could not afford the proposed increase. My account was in credit, our heating use was already extremely limited and I could not see what else we could reasonably cut.
EDF listened. It agreed to keep the payment at £230.89 provided I submit gas and electricity meter readings every month.
That was not refusing to pay a legitimate bill. It was questioning an automated demand and reaching a responsible agreement based on actual readings.
My first response will not be to give up rugby, stop going out with my wife or sit in a darker house. My first response will be to ask the company to justify what it is demanding.
People should examine bills, check their usage, challenge mistakes or unreasonable payment proposals and request affordable arrangements. Not every challenge will succeed, and legitimate charges remain payable. But neither companies nor government should assume that ordinary people will quietly surrender every modest pleasure whenever another demand arrives.
Politicians Made the Choices—and Failed to Prepare
I place the primary responsibility for this situation upon politicians and the parties that have governed us.
That does not mean every problem was created in Westminster. Britain has faced a global financial crisis, a pandemic, wars, energy shocks and technological change. Businesses, regulators and individual choices also matter. But governments are elected to anticipate pressure, make long-term decisions and protect the country's capacity to cope.
Instead, successive governments have kicked difficult cans down the road: housing, social care, energy security, water infrastructure, skills, industrial capacity and the funding of public services. Each problem was declared urgent, reviewed, promised a solution and then passed to the next government.
Population policy is part of that failure.
The UK's population rose from approximately 63.7 million in 2012 to about 69.5 million by mid-2025—an increase approaching six million people. Immigration is not the only reason the population changed across that whole period, although net international migration became the overwhelming driver of the sharp growth in the most recent years.
My criticism is not aimed at the people who came here. Many work, pay taxes, staff essential services, study, raise families and contribute to their communities. They did not set the immigration rules, decide how many visas to issue or control national investment.
Government did.
If ministers choose or permit rapid population growth, they have a corresponding duty to plan for it. Where are the additional homes, GP surgeries, hospital capacity, school places, reservoirs, sewage systems, transport links and secure jobs required by a much larger population?
Population growth can increase the workforce, tax receipts and the overall size of the economy. But a larger economy on paper does not guarantee a better life per person. If housing and public infrastructure fail to keep pace, more people must compete for scarce homes, appointments and services. Rents rise, waiting lists lengthen and resentment grows.
Politicians cannot take credit for the economic activity created by a growing population while denying responsibility for the pressure created by failing to invest alongside it.
Nor should they use migrants, pensioners, disabled people or the unemployed as convenient explanations for problems produced by years of inadequate planning.
The central failure is not simply that the population increased. It is that governments allowed major demographic change without building the country needed to support it.
“Without Migrants, the NHS and Care System Would Collapse”
We are often told that without migrant workers, the NHS and care homes could not function. Given the workforce we have today, there is considerable truth in that claim.
Around 325,000 of approximately 1.5 million NHS staff in England reported a non-British nationality in June 2025. Overseas workers are not a marginal addition to the service. They treat patients, nurse the sick and perform essential work every day. They deserve gratitude and fair treatment.
But their importance raises another question that politicians should not be allowed to avoid: where was the long-term workforce planning?
Where were the sufficient university and training places for doctors, nurses and other health professionals? Where was the investment in retaining experienced staff? Why did we allow working conditions, pressure and morale to reach the point where so many trained people left or reduced their hours?
Recruiting a qualified person from overseas may fill today's vacancy, but it does not excuse failing to train enough people here for tomorrow. Nor is it automatically ethical to depend continually upon countries that may have health-worker shortages of their own.
Social care exposes the failure even more clearly. We describe care workers as essential, trust them with vulnerable people and then frequently pay them close to the legal minimum. Skills for Care reported that the median care-worker rate in March 2025 was £12 an hour—only 56 pence above the National Living Wage at that time. Some advertised jobs sit even closer to the legal floor.
This is demanding, responsible and deeply human work. Paying only pennies above the minimum tells workers that, although the service is essential, the people providing it are valued as cheaply as the law permits.
I also reject the lazy claim that British-born people simply “do not want to do these jobs.”
People do not reject care because caring has no value. Many are deterred by the combination of low pay, physical strain, emotional pressure, insecure hours, travelling between appointments and enormous responsibility. Front-line carers help people wash, dress, eat, use the toilet, take medication and retain some dignity during the most vulnerable periods of their lives. The work can be exhausting, intimate and upsetting.
If an employer struggles to recruit or retain people for work like that while offering little more than the legal minimum, the obvious question is not, “What is wrong with British workers?” It is, “What is wrong with the reward and conditions attached to the job?”
Calling it work that local people will not do is convenient. It allows government and the industry to avoid asking what wage, security, training and career prospects would make people want to enter care and remain there.
Migrant workers may accept conditions that others cannot afford to accept, particularly when a visa and the right to remain are connected to their employment. That does not prove the wage is fair. It may instead reveal an imbalance of bargaining power that makes those workers vulnerable to exploitation.
Under no circumstances do I blame the people who come to this country and perform these essential jobs. They deserve the same fair pay, security and respect that I would demand for a British-born worker. My criticism is directed at the politicians and funding system that allowed essential care to depend upon paying any group of workers as little as possible.
Care providers themselves do not all have enormous profits or unlimited freedom. Many depend upon council contracts that fail to cover the full cost of decent pay, training and travelling time. That takes the responsibility back to government funding and the absence of a durable social-care settlement.
Politicians cannot neglect domestic training and retention, underfund social care, rely upon overseas recruitment to hold the system together and then present that dependence as though it appeared naturally.
The migrant worker is not the failure. The failure is a country wealthy enough to know it will always need doctors, nurses and carers, but apparently incapable of planning, training and paying for enough of them.
Older People Are Not “Blocking Beds”
The phrase “bed blocking” is another example of language placing blame upon the wrong person.
An older patient does not remain in hospital for entertainment. They remain because somebody has decided that it is not yet safe for them to go home, or because the support required for a safe discharge has not been arranged.
The medical treatment may be complete, but that does not mean the person can suddenly wash, dress, prepare food, manage medication, climb stairs or move safely without help. They may need rehabilitation, adaptations, equipment, a home-care package or a place in residential care.
In September 2025, around 11% of hospital bed days in England were occupied by patients considered medically ready for discharge. Earlier government analysis found that significant proportions of delayed patients were waiting for home care or a care-home place. Those are not beds “blocked by the elderly.” They are beds occupied because the bridge between hospital and adequate care has broken down.
Sending somebody home without sufficient support may make one hospital statistic look better for a day. If that person falls, misses medication, becomes malnourished or cannot keep warm, they may quickly return in a worse condition.
Cold is particularly important for older people and those with existing illness. The UK Health Security Agency warns that cold weather can trigger heart attacks, strokes and respiratory problems, as well as worsen chronic conditions such as dementia and lung disease. Telling pensioners to economise by heating their homes less can therefore create additional illness and further pressure upon the NHS.
This is the false economy running through the entire argument. We save money on home care and adequate heating, then spend far more treating preventable deterioration in hospital. We underpay care workers, struggle to recruit them and then blame older patients when nobody is available to support their discharge.
The older person is not the obstruction. The absence of properly funded care before and after hospital is the obstruction.
What Happened to the 40 New Hospitals?
Governments have repeatedly promised more hospitals. The most famous promise was the New Hospital Programme, established in 2020 with the stated aim of delivering 40 new hospitals by 2030.
So how many have actually been built?
The government's own annual report, published in July 2026, lists seven schemes as open to patients:
- Royal Liverpool Hospital
- Dyson Cancer Centre in Bath
- Midland Metropolitan University Hospital
- Brighton 3Ts redevelopment
- Northern Centre for Cancer Care
- Greater Manchester Major Trauma Hospital
- The CEDAR programme
Seven is a long way from 40—but even that comparison is too generous.
These are seven schemes, not seven entirely new general hospitals conceived, built and opened as a result of the 2020 promise. The list includes specialist cancer and trauma centres, new buildings, and redevelopments within existing hospital sites. The Brighton 3Ts scheme is counted as open although the Sussex Cancer Centre and ancillary works are still unfinished. Royal Liverpool and Midland Metropolitan were both projects already under construction years before the New Hospital Programme was established.
That does not mean these facilities are unimportant. Every new ward, treatment centre and replacement building can improve patient care. But honest language matters. A new cancer centre or a major extension should be described and celebrated for what it is; it should not be used to create the impression that a completely new district general hospital has appeared because of a later political promise.
The National Audit Office concluded that the original plan to deliver 40 new hospitals by 2030 was unrealistic. The programme has now been reset and spread across waves extending well into the 2030s. By March 2026, nine hospitals were recorded as being in construction—but being in construction is not the same as being open, and an enabling-work ceremony is not a completed hospital.
This matters directly to the argument about older people supposedly blocking beds. Ministers cannot spend years failing to provide sufficient hospital capacity, rehabilitation places, community services and social care, and then present the patient waiting safely to leave hospital as the cause of the shortage.
If the population grows by millions while hospital and care capacity fail to keep pace, pressure is not an unforeseeable accident. It is the result of choices. If an ageing population requires more treatment and support, that is not a surprise either. Birth records have existed throughout every one of those people's lives. Governments knew how many people were approaching old age and had decades in which to prepare.
The promise was 40 new hospitals by 2030. The official position in July 2026 was seven schemes open to patients, defined broadly enough to include specialist centres and redevelopments, with part of one counted scheme still under construction.
That is not merely a delayed building programme. It is a powerful example of the gap between political announcements and what people can actually see and use.
What Should Government Do?
It is fair to ask how pensions, welfare, education and care can be funded. Public money is finite, and slogans do not balance accounts.
But punishment is not a financial strategy. Government should:
- Define what an adequate State Pension and minimum safety net actually provide.
- Tax high incomes and wealth fairly instead of weakening universal foundations relied upon by people with modest means.
- Pursue large-scale tax avoidance with at least the determination applied to benefit fraud.
- Require highly profitable employers to accept responsibility for adequate pay and predictable hours.
- Build social and genuinely affordable housing, reducing both hardship and long-term housing-support costs.
- Treat education and nationally needed skills as public investment rather than loading the full risk onto students.
- Provide healthcare, mental-health support and occupational assistance before manageable conditions become permanent exclusion from work.
- Establish a durable social-care settlement that shares unavoidable risk rather than allowing frailty to destroy a lifetime of security.
- Publish hospital-building claims scheme by scheme, stating clearly whether each project is a completely new hospital, a replacement, an extension or a specialist centre—and whether it was already under construction when announced.
- Prepare workers for AI before jobs disappear and ensure that the productivity gains help fund transition and public services.
Individuals have responsibilities: to work when reasonably able, engage with genuine opportunities, pay what they properly owe and avoid abusing shared systems.
Government and employers have responsibilities too: to ensure that genuine opportunities exist, that work provides a living and that illness or misfortune does not result in destitution.
Responsibility must travel in both directions.
When Everyone Feels Attacked, Division Follows
Perhaps it is unsurprising that society has become so divided. Almost everyone feels threatened.
Young people fear never owning a home or receiving a pension. Workers see more of their income disappearing. Tenants fear the next rent increase. Homeowners fear losing the security they built. Pensioners fear weakened protection. Disabled people fear reassessment, and unemployed people fear losing the means to survive.
Each fear is real. Instead of addressing them collectively, political rhetoric turns ordinary people into competitors.
The young blame the old. Workers blame claimants. Tenants blame homeowners. Healthy people question the sick. People who retained some security are treated as though they must have stolen it from somebody else.
That division is useful to anyone who wants the economic system itself to escape scrutiny.
As long as we are arguing about whether a pensioner deserves a season ticket or whether an unemployed person deserves to eat, we are not asking why secure employment, affordable housing, education and reliable public services have become so difficult to provide.
We will not make life fairer for one struggling group by making another struggling group poorer.
We Must Stop Putting Up With Slogans
We have become hardened to politicians promising to “get tough,” “crack down” and punish whichever group is currently unpopular.
Tough language is not proof of competent government.
It does not create a secure job, build a home, reduce a student's debt, shorten a waiting list or care for an older person. Announcing punishment is easy. Rebuilding industry, reforming social care and preparing for technological upheaval are difficult.
People must act—peacefully, lawfully and democratically. We can question claims, contact our representatives, join campaigns or trade unions, support community organisations, protest peacefully and vote. Above all, we can refuse to repeat language designed to make vulnerable neighbours into enemies.
When somebody blames pensioners for the housing crisis, ask how reducing the State Pension will build houses.
When claimants are blamed for unemployment, ask where the secure vacancies are.
When a politician promises to “get tough,” ask precisely who will suffer, how that suffering will solve the underlying problem and what evidence supports the policy.
We Are Sliding Towards an Abyss
I am not arguing solely for myself or my generation.
I want younger people to have affordable homes, secure employment and education without beginning adult life under an enormous financial obligation. I want disabled and sick people treated with dignity. I want unemployed people supported while they find genuine work. I want carers recognised.
And I want pensioners who contributed throughout their working lives to retire without being made to feel guilty for receiving a modest pension.
If nothing changes, today's young worker may become tomorrow's long-term unemployed person. Today's healthy taxpayer may become tomorrow's disabled claimant. Today's homeowner may become tomorrow's care-home resident. None of us is permanently protected from illness, redundancy, ageing or misfortune.
We cannot recreate every part of the past, nor should we try. But we can reverse political choices that have made secure housing, worthwhile employment, education and dignity increasingly difficult to obtain.
Before deciding what it can afford to pay, government should answer three questions:
- What is the minimum upon which an unemployed person can realistically live?
- What level of State Pension provides dignity rather than merely delaying destitution?
- How much of a person's lifetime security should unavoidable care be allowed to consume?
A country's accounts must be sustainable—but so must the lives of the people appearing in those accounts.
I do not want young people to have less so that I can retain my pension. I want them to regain the opportunities my generation had, and I want the promises made to my generation honoured as well.
That is not selfishness.
It is the belief that progress should improve life for every generation, rather than demanding that one group suffer so another can survive.
Evidence consulted
- Office for National Statistics, Vacancies and jobs in the UK: August 2026.
- Office for National Statistics, Consumer price inflation, UK: July 2026.
- House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee, Transition to State Pension Age (2026).
- Institute for Fiscal Studies, What do you need to know about the triple lock? (9 September 2026).
- Department for Work and Pensions, Benefit and pension rates 2026 to 2027 (£241.30 full new State Pension).
- Department for Business and Trade and Low Pay Commission, The National Minimum Wage in 2026 (£12.71 National Living Wage for workers aged 21 and over).
- Reform UK, Reform's plan to safeguard the future of the welfare state (18 August 2026).
- Ofwat and Discover Water, average household water and sewerage bill figures for 2026–27.
- MoneySavingExpert, average water bill figures for 2022–23.
- The Food Foundation, Food Prices Tracker (June 2026).
- Office for National Statistics, UK population estimate of 63.7 million in mid-2012.
- Office for National Statistics, Provisional population estimate for the UK: mid-2025 (69.487 million).
- House of Commons Library, NHS staff from overseas: statistics (November 2025).
- Skills for Care, The state of the adult social care sector and workforce in England 2025.
- The Health Foundation, Delayed discharges from hospital: comparing performance across the UK (December 2025).
- UK Health Security Agency, evidence review on cold weather and health (February 2026).
- Department of Health and Social Care, New Hospital Programme annual report: 2025 to 2026 (July 2026).
- National Audit Office, Update on the New Hospital Programme (January 2026).