Here’s a thought that’ll have the Guardian in fits and the Express spluttering into its powdered eggs: what if we stopped handing out state pensions to people who’ve got perfectly capable adult children?
I mean, isn’t it time we asked why the taxpayer should keep bankrolling pensioners with three children in executive homes who think a birthday card once a year and the odd Zoom call is a substitute for, say, support?
Because let’s not pretend the system is working. The UK state pension is a magnificent fiction – £110 billion a year, built on the premise that we can keep paying more people for longer with fewer workers to fund it. It’s not a savings account. There’s no pot. You’re not “entitled” to your pension in any material sense – you’re entitled to hope that when you reach your golden years, there are enough mugs still working to keep the lights on at DWP HQ.
Meanwhile, we’ve allowed a silent social shift. Once upon a time, your children were your pension – emotionally, financially, sometimes even physically, when they pushed your bath chair down to the Co-op. Now? They’re more likely to be living in a different county, hoarding Air Miles and wondering how long they can keep your care costs off their balance sheet.
So here’s my modest proposal: if you’ve got adult children earning six figures, living mortgage-free in a house you co-signed, maybe you don’t need the state to step in. Maybe we should be limiting state pensions to those who don’t have adult children in a position to support them. Or, more gently, maybe your kids should get a hefty tax break for doing what used to be considered common decency – supporting their parents.
Radical? Not really. Singapore has a law compelling children to support their elderly parents. In parts of southern Europe, multi-generational homes are still normal. And even in Britain, before we sold the post-war dream to the lowest bidder, families looked after each other. Now we have a system that encourages atomisation, state dependency, and the delusion that society owes you everything because you once worked in accounts and didn’t murder anyone.
Imagine the outcry, though. “But what if their kids are horrible?” they’ll cry. Yes – and what if they’re in jail, or in Australia, or just plain useless? Fine. That’s where the state backstop kicks in. But if your children are sitting on stock options and sending the grandkids to private school, perhaps it’s not too much to expect them to chip in for your heating bills.
We could make it voluntary, of course – incentivised through tax relief, NI rebates, council tax discounts, or even inheritance tax exemptions. Support your parents now, benefit later. After all, we already hand out child benefit to anyone with a working womb. Why not parental benefit in reverse?
And here’s the irony: if we don’t do something like this, we’re left with the usual menu of idiocy. Raise the pension age until it matches life expectancy in Glasgow. Scrap the triple lock and face electoral annihilation. Or start taxing the dead before they’re even cold to fund a system no one trusts.
So yes – let’s consider the unthinkable. Let’s ask whether adult children should bear more of the cost of retirement. Not to punish anyone, but to rebuild the intergenerational contract we’ve spent the last fifty years dismantling in favour of car leases and cheap flights.
Because if we don’t want to be taxed to death funding a system that’s collapsing under its own contradictions, we may have to rediscover a lost art: families supporting each other.
Or to put it another way – if your kids are living the good life thanks to your sacrifices, maybe it's time they paid you back with more than a bottle of Harvey’s Bristol Cream at Christmas.
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