Sam Brodbeck Personal Account

Come the general election, the party will be over for well-off baby boomers

Ahead of the 2015 general election, George Osborne, chancellor at the time, made a not-too-subtle bid for the votes of older workers. He extended the pensioner bonds scheme until polling day itself. The bonds paid a far higher interest than anything else on the market – and you had to be 65 or older to buy them.

As we barrel towards the next election, you can’t imagine any politician these days making such a bald bid for the grey vote. Indeed, the Conservatives appear to have abandoned their traditional supporters. The party has squeezed property investors and ensured more families than ever are caught by inheritance tax.

Yes, the “triple lock” on state pensions means that today 12m retired people will receive an 8.5pc pay rise, worth more than £900 a year.

But because of a decision to stop increasing income tax thresholds, the Government will recoup billions of pounds from those same people in extra tax receipts. By 2028, when the freeze on the personal allowance is due to end, 1.6m more pensioners will be paying income tax than if the allowance had risen with inflation since the Government first froze it. Most recently, pensioners were excluded from the centrepiece of last month’s Budget. Jeremy Hunt cut National Insurance rates, which he crowed meant that the “average earner in the UK now has the lowest effective personal tax rate since 1975”.

But, of course, people drawing a state pension do not pay NI. So when the cut takes effect today it will not make a jot of difference. There are other signs older generations are being increasingly ignored by politicians.

Last month, the Financial Ombudsman recommended millions of women born in the 1950s, the so-called Waspis, should receive as much as £3,000 each because the Government failed to tell them of changes to their pension age.

Quite rightly, the Department for Work and Pensions disagrees, and it looks likely that compensation will not be paid. The mood has shifted – most reasonable people of all ages think the Waspis do not deserve a handout. More