This excellent report by the Select Committee on Public Service and Demographic Change (Ready for Ageing?) warns that the UK is unprepared for its rapidly aging population. Sadly, it does not address the impact of uprating discrimination in the state pension. As we well know, ending uprating discrimination to enable more UK pensioners to emigrate would produce substantial savings in healthcare and other costs.

The Report is well summarized in this article in Citywire.

Yay team! Here are Bernard Jackson, BC President (middle), Maxine Adams, and Jim Mennie “manning” the CABP table on 24 February 2013.

Professional Pensions reports there will be a £5.5bn windfall for the Treasury from the early abolition of contracting out.

See also this article in the Telegraph. It appears that the amount that pensioners will have to pay for nursing home care in the UK will be capped at £72,000 instead of the £75,000 the Government announced in February.

Professional Pensions reports that the Department for Work and Pensions estimates that the cost of introducing the new UK state pension system will be £265m.

Read more.

Not quite. It is widely anticipated that the white paper on the introduction of a flat-rate state pension will be published in the days following the autumn statement (5 December), after a series of delays.  Will it address up-rating?

Here is John Markham (Director, UK Parliamentary Affairs, International Consortium of British Pensioners) on expat radio talking about the continuing UK pensions struggle.

Champollion Digital has won the European Digital Public Affairs award for its work with the International Consortium of British Pensioners. 

We invite you to watch this video.

Now this we can agree with. Can we? As reported in the Telegraph.

And not just by the freezing of their state pensions.  “A growing number are considering moving their retirement funds out of the UK, a senior financial executive has claimed” – as reported in Investor Today.

Professional Pensions reports that Steve Webb has said that “a universal flat-rate state pension will be delivered early next parliament but concerns over the transition of benefits are still being ironed out.”

Read more: http://www.professionalpensions.com/professional-pensions/news/2206998/webb-holds-firm-on-flatrate-state-pension-despite-complications#ixzz27F9Dbf5H

Professional Pensions – News and analysis from the pensions market.