Fresh calls for early state pension access as Labour may bring forward age increase to 68
EXCLUSIVE: Not everyone will live to claim their state pension if the access age continues to increase, an expert has warned.
A pensions expert has called for there to be early access to the state pension as there is a risk some people may not live to claim their payments.
Kate Smith, head of pensions at Aegon, told Express.co.uk: "We’re very keen that people should be able to take it up to three years earlier at a reduced amount.
"That’s something they might look at, but they do need to work out the benefits system as well to see what would happen there."
She said this would help those who may not live to reach their state pension age to still get their long-awaited payments.
She explained: "It would be for people who are in poor health, so at least they get a state pension for a few years and they’re able to stop working.
"Of course, many of those people may have stopped working a few years before."
She said this is an important issue as the Government is due to review the planned increases to the state pension age within the next two years of this Parliament.
Legislation is in place for the access age to increase from the current 66 to 67 between 2026 and 2028 and then to 68 between 2044 and 2046.
But there have been suggestions the Government could bring forward the increase to 68 in efforts to keep the policy affordable.
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Ms Smith said: "The previous Government have committed to doing another review in a year or two’s time.
"I think they [Labour] will want to look at that and how longevity is working and how the Budgets are working, to see what they need to do.
"And also around the populace - not everybody is going to be able to achieve a higher state pension age as it goes up and up."
State pension payments increased 8.5 percent in April, with the full new state pension now paying £221.20 a week.
Labour has previously committed to retaining the triple lock, which guarantees payments go up each year in line with the highest of 2.5 percent, inflation or the rise in average earnings.
The year before this increase, pensioners received a record 10.1 percent hike in their payments, the largest increase on record.
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