Think-tank urges radical benefit overhaul and pension means test

  • 'Personal Welfare Accounts' would pay for unexpected unemployment
  • 'People are treated as if they have paid contributions when they haven't', report claims


People should be made to pay into lifelong 'personal welfare accounts' under reforms which would see them take more financial responsibility for their old age and National Insurance scrapped, a think-tank has argued. The report from Civitas argued that National Insurance is 'no longer fit for purpose' and everyone in work should be forced to save into a private pension to help shoulder the burden of rising old age costs. Civitas professorial research fellow Peter Saunders argued in the report, titled Beyond Beveridge, that the principle that those who are able to should pay into the system has been eroded and 'taxpayer-funded hand-outs have increasingly replaced contributions-based benefits'....Read more here