Andy Burnham’s administration is already eyeing the pension pots of millions of older Britons, egged on, unsurprisingly, by the same think tank stuffed with his own advisers.
The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), whose alumni network reads like a Burnham cabinet reunion, including his own chief of staff and the Energy Secretary, has published a report demanding pensioners be hit with National Insurance for the first time, alongside a new annual property levy and a near-doubling of capital gains tax.
Their justification: Britain’s ageing population is putting unsustainable pressure on the public finances, and today’s retirees are supposedly getting off lightly compared to working taxpayers.
Strip away the academic language, and the plan is simple. Apply a 2% National Insurance surcharge to any pensioner earning above the income tax threshold, which would hit roughly 9.6 million retirees and raise a comparatively modest sum for the Treasury. Scrap council tax and stamp duty in favour of a levy on home values, a change that would land hardest on homeowners in London and the South East. And raise capital gains tax on higher earners to match income tax rates, up sharply from where it sits today.
This is the same IPPR that has shaped Labour thinking for years, and the timing is no accident. Chancellor John Healey is scrambling to fill a fiscal hole ahead of his October Budget, one made worse by rising oil prices following the Iran war and by the government’s own spending promises on devolution, housing and social care. Burnham himself has refused to rule out tax rises, offering only the vague assurance that new spending “will be funded”, presumably by pensioners, homeowners and savers, since Labour seems constitutionally incapable of cutting anything else.
Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride didn’t mince words, warning that a proposal from “Andy Burnham’s favourite think tank” to hammer investment, pensioners and family homes should serve as a red flag for what’s coming in the Budget, and accusing Labour of having already strangled growth with previous tax rises.
Readers appear to agree. Beneath the original Telegraph report, one commenter warned that squeezing pensioners’ spending power would hollow out Britain’s high streets, since older shoppers are often what keeps local cafes, pubs and shops afloat, meaning less discretionary spending, weaker high streets, and ultimately a lower tax take as more people end up on benefits. Another was blunter still, arguing that taxing the value of a family home is “nonsense” and would be fairer replaced by a straightforward increase in income tax. A third asked pointedly whether anyone found this government’s economic record credible at all, given its earlier claims to have already “fixed” the economy.
It is worth remembering that Labour’s last attempt to touch pensioner finances, scrapping the Winter Fuel Payment, blew up in the government’s face within months of the 2024 election. The state pension triple lock, meanwhile, has proven untouchable for successive governments regardless of party. Yet here is Labour’s preferred think tank, staffed by the Prime Minister’s own inner circle, road-testing a far more sweeping raid on pensioner and homeowner wealth just as the Chancellor searches for cash.
Labour came to power in 2024 promising growth and fiscal responsibility. Yet growth has stalled, businesses are closing, the wealthy are departing and Labour are still drawing up plans to tax National Insurance out of retirees, tax families out of their homes, and tax even more investors out of the country. Pensioners who spent a lifetime paying in should not be treated as the easiest overdraft facility for a government that cannot control its own spending.
No small boats for 8 days in a row. Sky news 1hr ago