The welfare state has started to change significantly from what it has been for the last twenty years (the introduction of Jobseeker’s Allowance). As a former civil servant, working for the Unemployment Benefit, then Employment Services and finally Jobcentre Plus, I have participated in many significant changes and have experience of much of the eligibility criteria for entitlement to benefits. I am bound not to speak about much of the work I did and I am also bound not to speak detrimentally of my former employer. Suffice it to say that what I am about to discuss sits entirely in the future and therefore I am free to talk about it without restriction. Furthermore, it is a fair comment to say that what I am about to propose is conjectural but based on some rather compelling evidence that only a former benefit processor might spot.
Often it takes more than one symptom to diagnose a medical condition. I believe it is no different when one looks at a possible future trend. As the title suggests, I want to talk to you about the death of the state pension in the UK but the starting point for this must begin elsewhere, otherwise you will not see that there is indeed more than one condition that points towards an obvious conclusion. You will see by the time I have finished explaining the Universal Credit that the state pension is not the only welfare payment at risk.
The Universal Credit (UC) was originally started by Labour in the 1990s. Ian Duncan Smith cannot be credited with idea. What he can be credited with is rushing the legislation in and there will be a price to pay by many when it is fully rolled out across the country. But I am not going to pontificate on the moral issues of UC because, like it or not, the billions of pounds spent on implementing it (and an ageing benefit computer system propping up the old benefits) means that it will be railroaded into use ready or not.
For those not familiar with the benefit system I would like to outline briefly what is out there. The benefits I mention are the most common and well known / applied for:
People available for work can claim Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA).
People who are sick and no able to work can claim Employment and Support Allowance (ESA).
People who are not sick but also not available for work, single parents of young children for example, can claim Income Support.
These are the three primary benefits. If someone is in receipt of any of them they can claim housing benefit (although people in work can also claim housing benefit under low income rules).
People on benefit may also be entitled to claim council tax support.
Being in possession of an award for the current universal ‘Child Benefit’ is a requirement for claiming Child Tax Credits.
Working Tax Credits are for people at work but on low incomes, working 30 hours (16 for people with children or disability) and not entitled to claim any of the three primary benefits.
Universal Credit changes all this. JSA, ESA and IS, child tax credit and housing benefit will go, as they are all lumped together under one single benefit package. The important thing to note is that all of these are means tested.
I hope you are still with me. I know that this is an awful lot of benefit information to take in but you need to know where we are starting from in order to understand where we are heading.
As mentioned earlier, the current computer system handling the old benefits is coming to an end. So if the computer system will no longer support the benefits it once processed, what is going to happen to the contribution based benefits?
Contribution Based and Income Based needs to be explained (this is the last bit I promise). The difference between the two are simply the difference between those who have paid into the system to get something back and those who have not. The two most common benefits where the contribution based condition still exists is JSA and ESA.
Contribution based (Conts).
The amount of national insurance stamps from work and the amount of money earned means that you could be entitled to this benefit by right. You could have a million pounds in the bank and still be eligible.
Income based (IB).
This is means tested and looks at the income you and your family have plus savings and assets.
It therefore begs the question that if the Income Based JSA and ESA will lose their names and they become part of the new Universal Credit and the Contribution Based JSA and ESA remain on the old computer system that is falling apart, why have they been separated for the first time in their history?
One could argue that Universal Credit is an amalgamation of means tested benefits, of which Contribution Based benefits would have no place. On the other hand there is a the question that in the run up to the 2015 general election, the Conservative Party claim that they will attempt to save £12 billion from a £55 billion welfare budget. That is a huge chunk of money when one considers that the majority of the £55 billion is state pension.
In times of austerity, the government of the day has placed draconian measures on welfare benefit recipients, sanctioning the easy to punish and most vulnerable in society in order to save money. They did this for a whole parliamentary term of 5 years and clawed back (unfairly many will cry) about £3 billion.
So how would they save £12 billion? Perhaps a good start would be to abolish the JSA and ESA Contribution Based benefits.
So what this means is that your national insurance contributions will have no impact on future benefit claims. And there will be losers. Couples where both work but one person becomes unemployed, means they will no longer be entitled if the amount the partner earns is greater than the lowest amount the government says we can live on; a formula I have to point out that no one has ever seen and we have absolutely no idea how the government arrives at the conclusion they do. I sent an enquiry once and no one in the entire Department for Work and Pensions could answer it. In other words, it is not the lowest amount people can live on - it is the lowest amount they can get away with paying.
Child tax credits has, until now, been dependent on receipt of child benefit but the child tax credit element being absorbed into Universal Credit may or may not retain it’s link. Unlike JSA, ESA and IS, Child benefit is a universal benefit. Therefore it might be political suicide for any politician to attempt it’s removal.
But would politicians be so bold as to abolish the state pension?
Over the last year or so, the UK government has introduced legislation to make it mandatory for employees to participate in a ‘Work Place Pension’ (WPP). To begin with it was the large employers but in 2015 it became compulsory for a business with just one employee to pay in a work place pension. The WPP is very new but if the government are making it law that everyone should have one, it begs the question as to why it is so important?
Going back one moment to the notion that the government sets the ‘lowest amount’ one can live on, there is a top up system to old age pensions known as Pension Credit. If one’s state pension does not reach the lowest amount the Pension Credit will top it up. Obviously if there is a Work Place Pension for every employed person then from 2015 there will be a gradual reduction of this expense as the Work Placed Pensions start to pay out, thus reducing the gap between the state pension deficit and the government’s lowest amount.
But in the long run it does not make sense to go to all the trouble of forcing employers to set up WPP if the state pension remains. It is possible that the think tanks behind government policy have noted that the increase in the cost of living over the next few decades will wither outstrip the state pension’s ability to keep up or the government’s ability to sustain keeping the state pension index linked to inflation. Either way the introduction of the WPP is a clear indication that the state pension can either not sustain the demands of the future, or there are plans to abolish the state pension entirely.
Given the present squeeze on government budgets and the colossal debt the UK has, the only way to pay off such a large amount of money might be to relinquish one’s commitment to support and ever growing older population.
The population of the world is increasing, which means the burden on the state is not going to go away. With the National Health Service (NHS) possibly being the most sacrosanct of all government services already being place under great strain by the same growing older population, immigration and advances in medicine means the only way the budget for the NHS can go is upward.
The astrological planet for the NHS and also for pensions is Neptune. They are both large institutions under government control. Not surprisingly, whilst benefit systems are undergoing radical reform, so the 2015 general election has the NHS at the top of the agenda; should there be more or less privatisation and how does one fill in the £30 billion gap in the budget over the next five years.
The structure of our society comes under the influence of the Saturn Pluto cycle, which will complete in 2020. It just so happens that the societal cycle of Jupiter and Saturn completes just a year later. The Universal Credit, the abolition of contribution based benefits and a the general overhaul of our benefits is only the start of the shrinking of our welfare system.
By the next Jupiter Pluto conjunction in Libra on 31 October 2040, when Neptune is establish in the financial sign of Taurus, so the winding down of the state pension could begin. It will be a slow process because those who have paid into the state pension will be entitled to draw from it. I suspect the last state pension entitlement could be at the close of the Saturn Pluto cycle in Pisces (Pisces ruled by Neptune) on January 2054. The actual conjunction of Saturn Pluto is 2 February 2054 but governments tend to make changes either from January 1st of April 6th.
Astrologers may also want to note that in the approach to the Saturn Pluto conjunction, Jupiter, the old rulership of Pisces, is in opposition to Neptune through Gemini / Sagittarius. So while Jupiter is strong in Sagittarius, Neptune is not well placed. One is to do with money (Jupiter) opposing pensions (Neptune); the difference between this Jupiter / Neptune opposition and any other is the Saturn / Pluto conjunction suggesting the potential for major restructuring.
Even the personal planets of Venus and Mars are in a close enough conjunction in Capricorn to imply further that whatever happens at this time is indeed personal. In addition to the above, the Jupiter Neptune opposition sits in the 2nd / 8th house axis of the UK 1801 chart, relating to ‘my resources’ and ‘other people’s money’ respectively. The secondary Mars / Uranus conjunction to natal Uranus and the ascendant suggests that action will be swift - a cut off date where the state pension is suddenly no more.
I will be very lucky if I live long enough to see 2054. I am also not old enough to draw my state pension. But what this does imply is that now, in the fire of the global financial reset, there will be no significant solutions to old debts. But one hopes there will be many a wise head who understands how to change the blind consumerist insanity of the past in order not to amass even more debt.
The welfare system is unsustainable in it’s present set up because the UK government has maxed out the credit cards and has to pay it back. But it is a long term payment plan, so the welfare bill has to be drastically reduced. To achieve this at all, the state pension has to go.
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