Gold Magazine February - March 2013, Issue 23 | Seite 89

expectancy was 48 years, and the
Old Age Pension did not present a strain
on the national budget at 5 shillings per
week (roughly £19 today). UK
life expectancy today is 80.4
years and it’s no wonder we are
beginning to see strains on the
public purse.
The UK reportedly has a £7 trillion pension liability – that is five
times the value of everything the
country produces over the course of
a year. Included within this liability is
an estimated £55 billion
deficit/shortfall within
the FTSE 100 Company
pension schemes alone.
State pension obligations are said to make up
75% of this huge figure,
while public pension
schemes account for a
further £1.2 trillion. That
represents a staggering
bill of £146,000 for each
household in the UK.
The £100 billion the
government is spending
on pensions each year is
not even close to what’s
needed to ‘plug the hole’.
So, in times of austerity and deficit reduction, it’s clear that government has precious
little money to support cash-strapped families,
let alone continue with the over-generous state
pension. As bad as things may be, can we realistically ever expect to see an improvement?
The UK government has already increased
the state pension age and we should only
expect this to continue into the future. Other
measures of ‘plugging the hole’ could also
include reducing benefits and, of course, subjecting the state pension to a means test. The
recent auto-enrolment initiative taken by the
government – whereby the current working
generation is all but compelled to make an independent pension provision – is an admission
of the size of the problem but few believe they
will see any real benefit in their lifetime.
So what does this all mean for our private
p V