Many recent reform proposals have called for an improvement in the first tier of state pension provision. These have tackled three different ways to improve the Basic State Pension (BSP): improve the coverage, increase its level, and maintain its relative value by indexing in payment to earnings.

This Briefing Note considers why coverage should be improved and the possible ways of achieving this. Reforming just the BSP level has limited impact if inadequate coverage means that there are still people who are not receiving the full benefit.

To download Briefing Note 24, please click here. 

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