Report suggests pension age will have to rise to 70

A report by accountants PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) has waned that the pension age may have to rise to 70 by 2046 in order to deal with Britain’s debts.

Current plans introduced by the coalition Government will see the state pension age lifted to 66 for both men and women by 2020.

The pension age will then be lifted to 67 in 2036 and 68 in 2046.

However, according to PwC, in order to help pay for the ageing population, Britons will be forced to work until the age of 70.

In order to get the national debt back to pre-crisis levels below 40% of GDP by 2050 will result in £20 billion more tax hikes, such as lifting the VAT rate further, or spending cuts by 2020, said PwC.

Other tax hikes could be in the form of raising both employer and employee national insurance contributions, the report suggests.

However, further tax hikes would be unwelcome as Britons are already squeezed by cuts introduced by the coalition to reduce the budget deficit.

Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the Department for Work and Pensions comments: “In a country where 11 million of us will live to be 100, we simply can’t go on paying the state pension at an age that was set early in the last century.”

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