State pension age rise to 80 floated under 'loopy' Liz Truss proposal
The state pension age should have been raised to 80, according to Liz Truss
GETTY/PA
The state pension age could have been raised to 81 if former Prime Minister Liz Truss had her way.
Britain's short-serving leader reportedly floated the idea during a conversation at a Westminster garden party last summer.
According to The Mirror, Truss said: "Nobody should be allowed to retire until they’re 80."
While her remarks are said to have been "light-hearted", one Westminster source slammed the proposal as "loopy".
During her 49-day tenure as Prime Minister, the ex-Conservative Party leader refused to rule out hiking the state pension age.
While being interviewed at her party's conference in 2022, she did not commit to keeping the retirement age threshold at its current level.
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The state pension is usually paid every four weeks into an account of someone's choiceGETTYOn raising the pension age, Truss said: "You're asking me to speculate all kinds of decisions that haven't yet been made."
The former Conservative Party leader was pushed out of her position following the market reaction to her now infamous mini-Budget in September 2022.
Lord Frost, an ally of the former Prime Minister, previously advocated for raising the benefit's age threshold at an Institute of Economic Affairs last year.
The Tory peer called for the pension raise to be hiked to 75 to save money on public expenditure.
He explained: "People are much healthier now.
"We do need to do something like freezing the public sector health budget and finding a just way that public sector spending needs to go into the private sector."
Currently, the state pension age is sitting at 66 years old and is expected to rise to 67 in 2026-28, with a further hike to 68 in 2044-46.
Concerns have been raised over the long-term viability of the state pension, especially with the rising cost of maintaining the triple lock.
Following the Labour Party's landslide win during last month's General Election, the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) cited raising the state pension age as being on the cards for the new Government.
The think tank stated: "If it chooses to accept the recommendation of a previous independent review to bring the increase forward to the late 2030s, then those directly affected should be notified in the next few years (in line with the current Government’s sensible commitment to provide at least 10 years’ notice of any change.
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State pension age will rise to 67 by 2028 then it will further increase to 68 GETTY"Increasing the state pension age is a coherent response to increases in longevity at older ages, and one that other countries are also adopting. But it affects poorer people more, as well as those who find it more difficult to remain in paid work at older ages."
Labour has pledged to keep the triple on state pension payments in place throughout this Parliament, which is the metric used to determine the benefit's annual rate hike.
However, the party has not indicated whether it plans to bring forward any further changes to the state pension age.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves will outline Labour's fiscal agenda during the Autumn Budget on October 30.
GB News has contacted Liz Truss for comment.
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