The Sunday Times said the finance ministry wanted to break the link between pensions and wages for a year…reports Asian Lite News.
UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak is planning to block a near 6% rise in old-age pension payments as part of a wider effort to rein in the cost of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s spending, the Sunday Times newspaper said.
The pension promise was made during the Conservative Party’s 2019 election campaign, in which state pensions are meant to rise each year by the highest of the annual inflation rate, wage growth or 2.5%.
Due partly to distortions from the coronavirus pandemic, annual wages in the three months to April grew by an annual 5.6% – creating an extra 4 billion pound ($5.5 billion) annual cost for future pensions, it was reported.
The Sunday Times said the finance ministry wanted to break the link between pensions and wages for a year.
“Pensioners are going to be doing extremely well. It’s not politically that difficult a thing to smooth it out for a year,” the newspaper quoted an unnamed minister as saying.
Earlier, a Guardian investigation has found that a joint venture between Sunak’s billionaire in-laws and the internet retailing giant Amazon is in a multimillion-pound dispute with the Indian tax authorities,.
The disclosure adds to the list of legal battles currently involving the joint venture, following news on Friday that India’s competition commission has been given permission to relaunch an investigation into Amazon.
The Guardian reported that small traders claim they are being squeezed out of business by the multinational’s selling practices and that the US retailer’s 1 billion-pound-a-year venture with the chancellor’s father-in-law, the technology entrepreneur NR Narayana Murthy, could be bypassing Indian foreign ownership rules.
Amazon says it is operating in full compliance with local laws.
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