Is axing the pension triple lock the right move?

0:02Lee Boyce: Welcome to This Is Money podcast sponsored by Trading 212. Download the Trading 212 app today and open a cashiser with promo code TIM to get the 12 month bonus promo rate of 5.01%. Terms apply. I'm Georgie Frost and joining me and Lee Boyce today is Helen Crane. And goodbye expensive triple lock. Hello a new, likely even more expensive, national care service. From 2030, the state pension is changing to fund social care. So how will it work? And is it the right move? Also today, could the council take over your empty buy to let? Helen explains EDMOs and who could be stung. Fancy working for yourself?

0:42Lee Boyce: We reveal the 10 most in-demand self-employed roles. Plus what to do if you find out a colleague is being paid a lot more than you for doing something similar. And no more sickly smelling cloud puffs in your face as you walk down the street. We can but hope. A new vape tax comes into force this week. It's what's changing and how much costs will rise. Don't forget you start up to date with all the latest breaking money news. Just go to thisismoney.co.uk or download the app. But first, goodness, goodness me, it actually happened. Say what you like about Andy Burnham. But we on this pod had been wondering for a while which politician would be brave enough to take on the triple lock.

1:20Lee Boyce: But here we are. So from 2030, the earnings part of the state pension commitment is being dropped with any money saved, and I used inverted commas there, going towards a new social care service. Sort of to me sounds, Lee, a bit like I'm dumping my Lambo because it's too expensive and eyeing up a fleet of private jets. Anyway, before we get to that, the triple lock. What is it? Why was it brought in? What is it done? Sort of give us a little potted history and take us up to this point now?

1:52Georgie Frost: Sure thing, Georgie. Yeah, I mean, as you say, what a bold move by Mr. Burnham just sort of came out there. And there was lots of murmurs in the morning ahead of his TPM conference that there was some sort of triple lock announcement inbound. And then boom, there it went. There was a hush around the newsroom and then some bustle of excitement as it all sort of kicked off. So yes, the triple lock has become a very hot political potato, I would say, since it was introduced in the 2011-12 tax year by the coalition government when it was the conservatives and liberal democrats they brought in this promise that the state pension would rise by the greater of inflation 2.5 percent or annual earnings growth whichever figure was highest at the time state pension the way it was trickling eye out it was really not keeping pace with anything that was going on it looked very meagre and there was lots of unrest about it it was one of the key parts of that coalition government.

2:49Georgie Frost: So what has it done to state pension? We only have to look back over the table of the years. For each April, it goes up by one of those measures. In recent years, it's become more of a headache because of a bit of a skewing of the figures, I would say, in the aftermath of the pandemic. And what I mean by that is, for example, in April 2023, it went up by 10.1%, which was the inflation rate at the time. Average earnings then were at 5.4%, but 10.1 % was an almighty kind of rise when you look back over previous rises, which essentially were just not anywhere near as generous as that. 8.5 % in April 2024, again, earnings.

3:31Georgie Frost: And then it's been a little bit less since, 4.1 % in 2025 and 4.8 % in 2026 earnings. So those last three have been earnings. What it's done is the triple lock has since its creation in April, since it came in April 2011, up 89%. At the same time, CPI is up 60%. Afro-Jone is up 66%. So it's been a pretty good deal, I would say, for pensioners. That's why this kind of removal of the sticking plaster of the triple lock has been such a big deal. And do you know what, Georgie? I think we've spoken about it a lot in the podcast, probably over the past decade, to be honest. It always feels like in one form or another, it was on the chopping block.

4:11Georgie Frost: And this week, Mr. Burnham has decided to make it a, well, if he's still around in power, because this is from 2030, don't forget, we're going to have a general election before this. We will have what essentially is a less generous kind of version of this, where it will be a double lock when earnings element is removed, but not fully removed. because he was talking about potentially either this automatic annual link to average wage growth being removed but kind of a looser I would say long-term link assessed over time to ensure that you know the pension retains its overall value relative to the economy so basically what he was saying is that you know if the economy is doing well and wage growth is high it's not automatically not going to go up by a bit more than what's being kind of said here but fundamentally it looks like it's the end of their triple lock as we know.

5:04Lee Boyce: Yeah to a sort of double lock almost but you know the 2030 is quite significant obviously isn't it Lee because it wasn't just the Labour Party but I believe the Conservative Party before that they've kept it in their manifestos this will be the end of his parliament as it were so he can sort of scrap that manifesto do another one so we don't know exactly really what's going to happen but it's paving the way to suggest that firstly this needs to change because it's very expensive. That was the big criticism of it. But also what's not been spoken about so much, but that big elephant in the room, social care.

5:39Lee Boyce: So it is addressing something that absolutely needs to be addressed. But I just want to, before we get there, Helen, firstly, why is this so controversial? And how much extra was the triple lock costing? or is it costing?

5:55Helen Crane: It's very controversial as you say. I mean I'm kind of eating my words because I think I remember the last time I was on the podcast saying oh god I'm sick of talking about whether the triple lock will be scrapped because it's never going to happen. So I feel a little bit stupid now. You're right I mean the triple lock has been an incredibly sort of expensive policy to maintain but obviously incredibly popular with pensioners. I think it had to end at some point. The stat that has been bandied around this week, this is from the IFS, is that the old triple lock has increased annual state pension expenditure by 16 billion.

6:32Helen Crane: It's hugely costly. But then as you say, how much is this social care free at the point of use system gonna cost? I mean, presumably, that's gonna cost, as you say, much, much more. Who knows, really? I think that's the thing that's got to be ironed out. You know, it's very scant. He said this is going to pay for social care, but how is that going to work? You know, that's obviously something that could benefit the same people that are kind of losing the triple lock. And this is a huge issue. You know, at the minute, I think you have to fund your own care if you have£23 ,000 in assets and that includes your home.

7:12Helen Crane: So that means that a huge number of older people who aren't necessarily wealthy end up funding their own care essentially in full. So it's a problem that I think many people would like to see addressed. But it's kind of a lottery, isn't it? Because you don't know whether you're going to need social care. It's all essentially down to luck, how long you live, how good your health is. So it's creating some kind of parity in that sense. But I do think, you know, there's also I've spoken to some people in my family who are pensions this week and they are not not happy to put it quite mildly, this idea that the triple lot could be scrapped.

7:51Helen Crane: And I think people maybe see it as the first step in wider changes to the state pension. And, you know, people do rightly feel like they've kind of paid into this all their lives. They've worked hard and they've sort of paid their national insurance and they think they deserve to get something back in their retirement. and you can see why people feel like that.

8:11Lee Boyce: Just a quick one. Some of what I'm about to say for this segment is going to be related to, I did a post on social media and so got quite heated. And so I want to pose some of those issues to you. And the first one, Helen, if you don't mind, was someone asked me, I've done a bit of, you know, back of a stamp maths. I didn't, they did. And they worked out that young people would be 50 grand, let's say, worse off. But why are young people supporting scrapping the triple lock? Now, I have my views, but Helen, I ain't young. So why do you think that, as the younger one here, that young people are so anti the triple lock?

8:48Helen Crane: Oh, you're flattering me, Georgie. I'm not that much younger than you two. But yeah, you're right. I think young people are sort of cheering this. We actually has a column on our website this week from our colleague, Rachel Rickard-Strauss, who's saying that young people end up being the worst hit by this. Because obviously, if the state pension stops going up in these higher increments every year, then by the time they get to receiving the state pension, then the cumulative effect of that over years and years will actually be even bigger, which is a good way to think about it. I think it's a classic thing of young people just can't even fathom ever being a pensioner.

9:26Helen Crane: They think it's so kind of far away. And I think it is partly a financial education thing as well. You know, we don't teach young people about pensions and retirement. And, you know, I was probably guilty of this when I was young. You just think it's going to somehow be fine. You think, you know, if you work hard and, you know, your retirement is just going to be all right. And you don't really think about, oh, how much will my state pension be? and what's going to happen between now and then. I think there's just this kind of sense of injustice that younger people have. They see their parents and grandparents paying off their mortgage, living in big houses, you know, that old cliche of you bought a house for a fiver back in 1970-something.

10:06Helen Crane: You know, obviously that's an exaggeration, but, you know, I think young people do look at their sort of financial situation and that of their parents and grandparents, And they do rightly feel a bit hard done by, you know, if you look at things like the jobs market at the minute as well, AI sort of taking young people's jobs is super tough. You can see why young people look at pensioners getting these fairly sort of chunky increases every year and think, well, why can't some of that money go towards helping us? And, you know, it's not just really young people, you know, sort of young families are struggling with a lot of different costs.

10:41Helen Crane: But I think maybe young people forget to think that they will one day get there as well.

10:46Lee Boyce: I think part of it also, though, is a bit of trust that maybe one day it ain't going to be there for them anyway. So they're like, trust, I think. But Lee, throughout that, very briefly, you were nodding along.

11:00Georgie Frost: No, I certainly agree with what Helen says. I think there's this misconception amongst the young that basically everyone that's older owns their own home. They've got lots of money. And, you know, in some circumstances, that is true. you know there are some older people but a lot that are doing well for themselves but a lot of them have worked hard all their lives and are kind of in that position on merit and then you have a set of pensions that you know essentially live on the breadline and the state pension is their only income and rightly or wrongly they believe that state pension was their blanket their security for retirement whereas I think we are neither old nor young on this podcast we're in the middle kind of ground so we kind of get it it's not that long ago that we were young and we're kind of looking into the future and knowing it's not that long away now till we're you know getting older so we're in that position where i think we are more in control of our pensions and our retirement in terms of private pensions there's a lot more information out there a lot more of a kind of pressing need to say you should be saving into a private pension and actually if you are someone that's in their 20s 30s or 40s i mean really you're going to be needing to boost your pension payments probably by one percent uh to make up you know for the shortfall of this triple lock element being cut to a double lock if that makes you upset well then maybe you were a fan of a triple lock after all in your workplace might match that there were no times of hearts you know things are tight we've talked about this in the podcast recently i think there's going to be a tough winter ahead with energy bills with fuel prices uh lots of things at play and that extra one percent can feel like a stretch but if you can make it work and make it happen you're going to be far more in control of your retirement now the reason why older people feel a bit hard done by this is they feel that the pension state pension isn't generous enough you know compared to what our counterparts have in europe for example but the way it works in a lot of countries in europe they have a different kind of system where it's done in a different way for example france germany italy they have some workplace contributions that are rolled into the state pension so it makes it look as though it's more generous in this country what we do is we pay our national insurance typically for the new state pension you have to work 35 qualifying years to do that you need a minimum of 10 years and then you're going to get if you get the full state pension 241 pounds 30 pence per week that's about 12 547 pounds per year is that enough to be living on it's quite difficult

13:30Lee Boyce: But Lee, isn't the reality that only about, and it's hard to find the stats on this, but what, one in eight pensioners, some suggest even fewer than that, rely solely on the state pension? Are we careering towards means tested? Because I think the complaint with some people is that, well, very wealthy pensioners get this too.

13:51Georgie Frost: But they pay in their national insurance like anyone else. So it's kind of hard, I think, to start to say, no, actually, you've done too well. You know, you've saved too hard into your private pension. You don't deserve this full state pension. I think you start doing that and people, that really is another can of worms.

14:10Lee Boyce: But isn't that the tax system generally? You work hard, you do well, you earn money, you pay more tax.

14:15Georgie Frost: Yeah, exactly. But you do that if you're working like a baby. So then you get to state pension age and you think, well, I've done my part. and this is my bonus money for you know doing all of those difficult hard grafting years and i think that then as i say it's another can of worms and the other thing i should point out here georgie as well is i'm talking about the new state pension here there's a lot of people that are still on the old basic state pension which is a lot less generous we're talking here 184 pounds 90 if you get qualified for the full weekly rate and that's for men that were born before april 1951 and women before April 1953.

14:46Georgie Frost: That's a big cohort of people that see their state pension not rise as high and as much as people on the new state pension. So you've got this kind of two-tier state pension system at play as well. So I totally get it. The last thing I was going to say on this though, Georgie, and you touched on it a minute ago, is about this new National Care Service. I think on the podcast a couple of weeks ago, I went down on a bit of a tangent when I was talking about the cost of care and the fees and everything that's involved. and it's got completely out of hand in the past decade. And I think all of us on this podcast probably know a family member or extended family member or a friend that's gone through the pain of seeing an elderly member of family go into care and the incredible cost that that comes.

15:31Georgie Frost: And I was listening to this speech at the National Care Service. I kind of get the need that something needs to be done. And the core pillar of the policy, I believe, is providing free personal care for individuals over the age of 65 based on their actual needs rather than their ability to pay. So it's going to be in a phased part here where there's going to be an independent commission to figure out how this is going to work. And I believe, again, there's going to be a fully fleshed out model of this included in the next Labour Party manifesto. I'm going to be honest here. I think it's a very brave thing for Andy Burnham to come and do.

16:08Georgie Frost: Very early on in his premiership, something that's incredibly complex to sort of manoeuvre and do. But something does need to be done about the standard of care in this country and the cost of care.

16:25Lee Boyce: I kind of understand it. I need the dust to settle this, but I need to know more details on it. But I understand the concept. I was about to say the devil, Lee, as always will be in the detail. Always. And even if people say, look, probably won't even be his problem. We run through prime ministers like there's no tomorrow, but actually it's paved the way to give more options for future prime ministers, whatever they decide to do with it. But the money, quote unquote, saved the money that you would not be spending, shall I say, on the triple lock to be re-diverted somewhere else. You know, one, I think it would be quite, it wouldn't be very consistent.

17:01Lee Boyce: You know, inflation, as we saw only a few years ago, spiked to 11%. So that could be up and down and it could really change from one year to the next. If you're relying on this sort of binary mathematics here, X goes to Y. It could be very lumpy, the amount of money going towards a social care system. But as we say, the devil will be in detail, Lee, won't it?

17:20Georgie Frost: I'll be honest. He's talking about this being fully costed. And, you know, I can't see it. I just can't see it. And talking about changing to a double lock, you know, the figures that they're banding around is an additional 15 billion a year by 2040. It's also very far in the distance, doesn't it? What, 14 years' time? To me, it feels like a drop in the ocean, 15 billion pounds. To fully fund this feels very, very slim. Unless you start reforming how much there's caps on care fees and what care homes charge and all that kind of thing, I just cannot see how that could possibly cover the cost of something that sounds like the NHS sort of relaunched as the NCES National Care Service and we know how much the NHS costs and how much the ballooning cost of the NHS seems to go on from year by year and standards I'll be honest we always say don't really base to the NHS it's great in an emergency but not so much if it's not as you just said it could cost x but in reality it's probably going to cost y and I would have thought that y is a lot more than x but we'll see as i say brave move brave decision and there's always going to be people that are going to be very upset about the loss of the triple lot there's going to be people that think actually this is great i was looking at some um a survey that was done i think on the bbc this week it was very split down middle if we'd ripped it off straight away the band is straight away from next year i think it would have been a completely different kettle of fish but given that there's a few year run up to this gives people time to get their head around it i kind understand the move.

18:49Georgie Frost: And that's just me being polite about it.

18:51Lee Boyce: As I've said multiple times, I kind of assume that it won't be there for me. So I think that's a good mindset to have. And if you get the state pension, if you're fortunate enough, it is a bonus. So if you are young, focus on doing what you can for your retirement now. And when I say young there, I do include all of us in this. I think we are all fairly young. We've got a ways to go. I just wanted to, as I mentioned earlier, this sort of social media post I did, because it did highlight to me quite a few myths around the state pension and confusion. I think a lot of people are confused about how it works, who you're entitled to, etc.

19:27Lee Boyce: So I just wanted to do a very brief Q &A, yes, no, quick, myth-busting state pension section. Right, so firstly, Lee, does everyone get it?

19:37Georgie Frost: No, it depends on how many qualifying years you've got. For the new state pension, as I said, You usually need a minimum of 10 years. For the old state pension, it's less than that. But no, you don't automatically just qualify for it.

19:49Lee Boyce: Helen, do you always need to be working to get national insurance contributions that Lee spoke about earlier that go towards how much state pension you can receive?

19:58Helen Crane: No, you don't always need to be working. So, for example, if you're taking time off to have children or to care for someone in your family, you can get credits for that time. So it's not just for people that are in full-time work.

20:11Lee Boyce: So Lee, because I pay money for national insurance, is that money kind of ring fenced in a little pot just for me and it goes with me through my life?

20:19Georgie Frost: No, it does not. No, it's basically the NIA you're paying now is funding people's pension that they're getting now. And that's why I think there's fears over the future of it. And that's why Triple Lock's expensive. And one of the reasons why it seems to be one of those things where it's getting expensive. So something's got to be done about it.

20:39Helen Crane: Is it tax free, Helen? No, it's not tax-free. So your state pension contributes to your entire earnings for tax purposes. So the current income tax allowance is£12 ,570 a year. If your state pension, along with, say, private pension, other income, takes you over that, then you do need to pay tax on it. For people who just received the state pension and that's their only income in retirement, that's still just under the income tax allowance. So it's£12 ,547.60 a year. So that is just under the allowance, which is£12 ,570. However, the next time the state pension goes up, there is a chance that basic state pension alone could take them over the income tax threshold.

21:26Lee Boyce: Does your spouse inherit it when you die, Lee?

21:28Georgie Frost: And does your spouse inherit when you die? No, not automatically or in full. The state pension itself actually stops when you pass away. However, surviving spouse or civil partner might be eligible to inherit an extra payment or a portion of your state pension, depending on when you both reach state pension age and your unique NI record. So you check that out. You should use the gov.uk state pension inheritance tool website.

21:52Lee Boyce: Helen, do I immediately start getting it when I reach state pension age?

21:56Helen Crane: No, you do have to claim it. You also have the option to defer your state pension if you choose in exchange for higher payments down the line. But that's completely optional, up to you.

22:08Lee Boyce: Super duper. And the final one, Lee, I think this caused quite a lot of confusion. Personal pensions and public sector pensions are protected by the triple lock. No.

22:17Georgie Frost: What do you mean? The state pension, it literally says it on the tin, it's the state pension triple lock. Well, the public sector pensions are typically uprated annually in line with CPI inflation. And personal pensions depend on your individual investment choices or annuity or whatever you've got. So really, the triple lock is just state pension.

22:41Lee Boyce: Lovely. Thank you so much for clearing that up. Moving on. Councils are being handed new powers to seize homes that have been left empty for six months and potentially rent them out themselves. At the moment, a home generally has to have been empty for two years before these powers can be used. So what, Helen, exactly, is an empty dwelling management order and who could be affected? But before we get there, your article obviously focuses on buy to let and landlords. You can understand why, because if you haven't filled your home in six months, you don't want the council to be taking it off you.

23:10Lee Boyce: But actually, this can affect all homes, right?

23:14Helen Crane: Yes, potentially. this I'm calling them EDMOs I decided it's easier to say than empty dwelling management order it sounds like it might also apply to people who have second homes it won't apply to anyone whose home they live in as we understand so if you live in your house you're just away for a while then it shouldn't apply to you but perhaps people who have a have a second home or a holiday home that isn't their private residence, it seems like this could potentially affect them. So it's one of those stories this week that it sounds like a completely mad headline. It's this idea that councils can sort of seize people's homes, their private property, if they aren't occupied, which obviously has people kind of outraged.

24:04Helen Crane: And it is quite a controversial thing to announce. Obviously, we have huge housing crisis in this country and it does make people angry to think of homes lying empty when there's people that need them. But the idea that councils could seize a property that is privately owned by someone and sort of forcibly rent it out sounds quite severe. I think that actually though when you look into the practicalities of this it's not going to affect many homes and actually the chances of councils going in and doing this are probably quite low. So there's about 600 ,000 privately owned properties in England that are empty.

24:45Helen Crane: That's according to government estimates. So that's what maybe 1-2 % of all the homes in the country. So it's a very small proportion of properties that this could be happening to. And actually it's something that already exists. So councils actually already have this power to seize homes that are long-term empty. The only thing that's changing, and this is something that was announced by Angela Rayner at Labour Conference this week, by the way, is that at the moment, councils can only take these properties into their possession. And actually, probably possession is the wrong word, because the councils don't take ownership away.

25:23Helen Crane: They just manage them temporarily and rent them out and then hand them back to the owner. So the minute they can do this, if it's been empty for two years, what Angela Rayne is proposing to do is to take that limit down to six months. So something that already exists, why is there not outrage about this already? You know, why are people not crying out? God, the council's taken my property and is running out to someone because it almost never happens. Council's obviously hugely understaffed, huge budget problems. Where are they finding the people to go out and snoop on these homes and find out if they're empty.

25:58Helen Crane: I think it would probably be through council tax that they would find out whether these homes are empty. But frankly, councils don't really have the time. And it's a hassle for them, right? Obviously, they've got people to house, but the process of working out someone's home is empty, essentially taking it from them, getting the keys and moving in other people just seems like there's easier ways to house people than snatching away properties from landlords who've left them empty for a while. And honestly, there aren't that many empty homes. If you're a landlord with a property that's in decent nick, why wouldn't you rent it out or sell it?

26:37Helen Crane: I think a lot of these homes will be homes that are in terrible condition. Homes that have maybe been inherited and then just kind of abandoned because the person doesn't know what to do with them or they're not selling. I think these won't be nice homes sitting there just waiting for someone to move in you know landlords don't leave properties empty just for the for the fun of it the idea that these are ready to move into and just sitting there waiting is probably a bit of a fallacy to be honest these will be houses with kind of problems and reasons that they're not being occupied.

27:11Lee Boyce: Lee I think Helen makes a very valid point there I mean the stats that are banded around you know hundreds of thousands of these empty homes. And I think in our heads, we think of what's the, is it Bishop's Avenue near Finchley in London, which has got these amazingly massive houses that have all been left to sort of rot because they were bought by money from abroad. And we have this idea that loads of sort of foreigners were buying up these big, you know, was it Russian money or something, buying up these houses and they've all been left empty. But I wonder how, one, true that is. And also, it takes the council six months to do anything, let alone, do you know what I mean?

27:51Lee Boyce: What's the point in changing it from two years to six months? If two years wasn't really doing anything, I don't really understand what the point of this was. Is it sort of the narrative and the, I don't want to use the word spin, but is it more of a political story than an actual practical solution to an issue, which is we need more homes?

28:08Georgie Frost: Georgie, this is me with the hammer. this is me with the now and this is me now on the head i think that's exactly it to me this feels absolute nonsense i think it's this edmo thing is just absolutely ridiculous um i cannot see it in any way shape or form you know really working uh i understand the logic you know hundreds of thousands of homes you say hundreds of thousands of homes are empty people need homes the thing is if you have bought a home and you own a home it's your possession it's kind of up to you what you do with it right and already you are probably paying more council tax if you've bought it recently you're paying a lot more stab duty on it it's your prerogative you own it it's yours you can do what you want with it that's my viewpoint um if i'm being quite frank and i just cannot imagine as you say it's not like councils work on warp speed is it though a very epitome of glacial speed of anything and i just cannot imagine this working in any shape way shape or form and you know the properties as Helen was saying that are quite likely to be in disrepair so how does it all work how are you going to make someone pay to bring it up to standard and all of that kind of thing it's a lot more questions than there are answers on this and I think for that reason I would agree with what you your sentiment about spin and kind of making it it's one of those

29:28Lee Boyce: things I think you say out loud at a labor conference and there's lots of clapping in the

29:33Georgie Frost: room and like yeah yeah yeah yeah this is what we should be doing and then in the actual real world it doesn't particularly make much of a difference and i cannot imagine many homes falling into an

29:44Lee Boyce: edmo well we'll see ask ed ma ed magnus uh to follow up this story and see what comes of it moving on because post the summer holidays is traditionally a good time for two industries Divorce lawyers and recruiters. If the thought of returning to work, we'll leave marriage to one side, shall we? That's for another podcast. But if the thought of returning to work fills you with dread, what about being your own boss? Well, This Is Money have the 10 most in-demand self-employed roles and they are.

30:18Georgie Frost: Most in demand. I was quite interested by this, actually, Georgia. I liked your intro there about recruiters and divorce lawyers. Very nice. I mean this is really interesting I think let's set the scene a little bit before I just wade into it I think we're in a time at the moment where one of the most hot topics is the future of your career whether or not AI is going to steal your job I think that is very much a common theme of conversation in pubs up and down the land and the fears and all of that kind of thing lots of people are retraining doing other kind of industries and thinking what AI can't take this type of thing and I think actually this list has got things in here that kind of show that so number one with a 58 rise in kind of requirements driving the instructors now that's quite interesting i don't know if i'd like to be a driving instructor i think it would fill me with kind of i don't know if my heart could take it i think i'd be a little bit frightened to be driven around by that but do you know it's a it's a job that people have to do to get people safe on the road no it is though it's like it's quite a Just a job, I'd say.

31:23Georgie Frost: Just a job.

31:24Lee Boyce: No, it's a job. If you're absolutely desperate.

31:28Georgie Frost: No, no, no, no, no, no. That is not what I meant. I mean, it's kind of like a difficult job to get into. It's not for you, Lee. It's a difficult job to get into. And it's very difficult to do as well and train someone properly to be safe on the roads. There's a lot of responsibility. Anyway, moving on. I'll give you the rest of this. Market and street traders, 48%. I think I'd be good at that.

31:52Lee Boyce: Go and get your carrots. I reckon.

31:56Georgie Frost: I reckon that'd be good. Childminders, definitely not. That's up 40%. We'll leave that one. Bricklayers, 28%. Bricklayers, you can understand that. Again, one of those joys. It takes a lot of skill and a lot of patience and a lot of practice. Floras and wall-tiles, up 20%. Fitness and well-being instructors, up 18%. Now, I reckon I'd be a great reformer, Pilatos teacher. I'd be well into it. Go proper Mr. Motivator. Hotel managers and proprietors, plasterers, taxi drivers and chauffeurs and florists make up the rest of this job. Most in demand for self-employed. Again, I think this is quite self-explanatory.

32:33Georgie Frost: You can understand why people are kind of doing it. And lots of people, I think, again, are minded to go it alone. The number of sole traders is up 5 % in the past year. It's up 17 % since 2010. Small businesses are the backbone of this country. and then you go into the comment section of this and you realize that there are lots of people that have gone and taken their skills and gone elsewhere and actually we had a story in money mail this week of someone who um was saying the ai was stealing his job as a travel writer and a kind of content creator and instead of leaving it too late to retrain to do something he retrained as a gardener and is enjoying it vastly and i think there's a lot of that kind of thing going on they're kind of like looking at the future thinking what is it that i could do you know strings to your bow type thing what will i enjoy what isn't ai going to steal i think it's um i think story is a good kind of way of looking at what's in demand and what you could do and hey maybe being in driving instructors for you it could be your calling absolutely not knocking

33:37Lee Boyce: that i actually wanted to be a brickie when i was younger i could see that yeah yeah yeah um We had a house extension. It was a kitchen extension, whatever. It wasn't very big. But I remember having a chat with Bricky. Mr Seal, he was called. Great name.

33:52Georgie Frost: And saying I wanted to be a Bricky. What's his name actually? Mr Seal?

33:56Lee Boyce: Mr Seal, guarantee you. Mr Seal, he's the best. Anyway, he's still going at like 90 or something.

34:01Georgie Frost: Okay, Georgie, I've got a challenge for you. Can we send you out to be a Bricky for the day? Yeah.

34:09Lee Boyce: I'd love to.

34:10Georgie Frost: If you're a brickie and you fancy having Georgie come and build an extension, get in touch.

34:16Lee Boyce: But I am well up for it. Helen, just a quick one. Which one would you pick of the list? I'm going to be a brickie. Lee's going to be a...

34:23Helen Crane: Market trader. Lee was a market trader. Boise's carrots. I would 100 % be a florist. I think regularly about becoming a gardener or a florist or someone working with plants and flowers. I would absolutely love it.

34:35Lee Boyce: I feel a series coming on here. We need to do like little segments of a day in the life and we go and actually try this stuff out. Right. There you go. Lee, that's your next feature. Right. Meanwhile, just in case you're on the fence about whether you should go freelance or not, here's a great reader question time that sort of will make you potentially quite peed off, I think, if you are employed. So read a question. I've discovered a colleague who joined two years ago is paid 20 ,000 more for a similar role. Now, I don't know how much they get paid. So I don't know if that's like double or that's just a small percentage.

35:11Lee Boyce: But either way, my boss says it's because that's what it costs to get them to move from a rival company. And they are 10 years old with higher earnings built up over a longer career. We are both women. So this is not an equal pay issue. Is there any other way I can challenge this? Helen, this is such an interesting point coming down to things like how much it costs to recruit people, people with more experience, etc. Even though you're doing a similar role. Oof. What's the conclusion?

35:42Helen Crane: I agree. I think so many people will have had situations like this at work where you find out what a colleague's being paid and you think god how did they get that much so i have a lot of friends who work in the public sector and they find this astounding because obviously their salaries are all in bands and go up really strictly and really incrementally so like you can't just ask for a pay rise and get when you can't pay someone a big salary to hire then it's all a really set thing and they find stuff like this absolutely mad they're like how is that fair? And I think everyone will recognise this.

36:16Helen Crane: So the answer, we've spoken to Kate Underwood, who's a HR expert, and she's given a really comprehensive answer to this. So what she's advised this reader to do, because the reader says both these people are women, so there's no kind of equal pay claim, which is often a route that people might go down if they find out a colleague has been paid more than them. So she advised them to put in a written grievance and quote back what her boss said to her that it just cost them more to get this person because they were coming from a rival. She told them to ask for the criteria for the pay range for the role and what this£20 ,000 is actually buying.

36:55Helen Crane: She says any rules about not discussing pay with colleagues, that's essentially unenforceable if you're checking whether you're being discriminated against. So that's something that companies will often bring up. You're forbidden from talking about your salary with college she says if you might have a real case for discrimination then it's fine to do that also a point on timing so uh she said discrimination claims usually have to be started within three months of the issue coming about so yeah really interesting to know that you can actually you know this doesn't just have to be something you hear in the office and feel a bit annoyed about if you really feel that someone's being paid much more than you for doing the same or a similar job then there is actually something you can do about it.

37:43Lee Boyce: I was just thinking then, if the Labour Party wanted to do something I think would be quite popular, ban companies from banning staff from talking about pay. I was trying to work out then, like, how is that legal that you can do that? But you can as a company, as long as, as you said about the protected characteristics thing. But what's the reasoning behind why you wouldn't be allowed to discuss with your colleagues about pay?

38:07Helen Crane: So people don't find out how much they were earning. Companies don't have to pay them more. That's it, isn't it? There's no wider... So yeah, it doesn't benefit me to... No, of course not. It purely benefits your employer.

38:19Georgie Frost: I think it highlights, Georgie, as well. If you're someone that's worked at the same company for a very long time, quite often you end up getting left behind a little bit because you might not be constantly requesting pay rises. you might not be earning what you should be earning and then you get someone that does come and potentially in the same role same job or very similar but does have experience elsewhere and there are that the cost of getting them in and then you start opening a real pandora's box if you have all staff talking about how much they're earning and it could be a real headache for employers you have to balance the kind of experience element but experience versus loyalty I think is sometimes one of those things that kind of gets warped in the workplace.

39:01Georgie Frost: So what I would say is if you are someone that's worked at the same place, worked for a long time, you know, don't get mad, get even. You know, if you're not asking and staking a case for why you believe you are due a pay rise, £20 ,000 pay rise is probably quite unrealistic. But you should use it as part of your reasoning. But then an employer might say, well, you shouldn't know how much someone else is earning. And that's why I'm saying it's a real Pandora's box, because if everyone starts sort of talking behind an employer's back about how much they're earning, it's a difficult situation.

39:30Lee Boyce: I'm unconvinced, Lee. I'm unconvinced. If you are paying someone as an employer a certain amount of money, you should be able to back that up. As Selim was saying earlier, because you've got these skills, these extra years of working, you know, I just think that's why we've got a gender pay gap thing because nobody's talking about it. But either way, that's just my view. Finally, I wasn't really bothered about this until I was walking down the street in London yesterday and I was caught behind a lady who was vaping. And I could have just moved out the way, but it was a busy street and I just kept getting these wafts of some hideously sickly strawberry thing in my face as I was walking along.

40:07Lee Boyce: It was making me feel quite nauseous. Now, I'm not sure a new tax on vaping is going to stop people doing it. I don't even know if it's a good thing. I don't know enough about it. Thankfully, thank God, I've never smoked and I've never vaped. So I don't know about the health benefits, but I thought they were supposed to be healthier. I don't know. But they were supposed to be slightly cheaper, weren't they? So a new tax is going to add a few pennies on how many pennies are we talking about here? And why is it coming in?

40:34Georgie Frost: I'm in the same boat as usual. You actually don't vape, don't vape, never have done, don't really understand it. And we were having a very fierce debate in the office this week about vaping. So let me take you back to the start of the week. I've got an email and it said about this new vape tax coming in this week. Completely passed me by. Completely had no idea. So I asked our resident vape expert, Angharad Carrick, whether she knew about the vape tax and it kind of passed her by as well. And then we sort of looked into it, realized it was announced in the budget a couple of years ago, coming in October 2026, just all of a sudden.

41:05Georgie Frost: And I think a lot of people that vape have no idea about this tax that's coming in, which is a vaping products duty, which is not a very catchy name. And so I think it's caught a lot of people kind of a bit by surprise, didn't realize that this was actually a thing and this is a thing that's happening. now the fierce debate in the office and helen and i were talking about this is that i feel like with vaping uh this is not a health podcast but i feel vaping while it might be deemed as healthier to cigarettes i feel like people do it a lot more so i'll be on standard at the train station platform no one lights up a cigarette they don't know up a cigarette and then suddenly stub it out and go on the train but people do just get their vape out their pocket and have a few drags on it and they might have a few drags on it in the carriage of the train and they might be having a few drags of it here and there and everywhere where they would have to physically stand and light a cigarette which has become very sociable sociably unacceptable in lots of different settings including the pub whereas i feel like with vaping people just do it kind of sneakily and i see it everywhere i was on a flight once and someone was vaping on it it's just like in front of me vaping on the flight didn't give a flying fig so i kind of don't understand the element of it being healthier while it might be healthier per kind of drag or vape if you're doing it 20 times more than a cigarette surely the the kind of any health benefit of weaning yourself off the cigarettes or the vapes is lost anyway that aside what is changing what's coming in new tax of vapes two pound twenty per 10 milliliter of e-cigarette liquid uh is kicking in um and there's going to be two as two pound twenty increase per 100 cigarettes and tobacco duty as well which the government says maintains the financial incentives to switch from tobacco to vaping um it's going to raise 550 million pounds a year by 2030 31 for the treasury and there's lots of people in the industry that are saying actually it's going to be far more than that because they've underestimated how much liquid people get through in a week so there's research here and actually i was surprised equally as surprised by this there's a uk vaping industry association and what he was saying was that weekly e-liquid consumption is about 24 millilitres which is about double the estimate used by HMOC and it's modeling for the duty so if it is that could actually mean a billion pounds in duty every year obviously the vaping industry is up in arms about it trouble is I think a lot of people have tridden that path of vape and got into that false sense of security of why they some not smoking cigarettes and still haven't given up which is meant to be the kind of step towards doing this the reason why i think this is a good thing personally if you're someone that's listening to the podcast and vapes and it's going to be more expensive i'm sorry but the one thing i would say that's that for me is important about this is it hopefully will stop younger people being able to access vapes at quite a low price and if you look around you on the high street these colorful flavored vapes um i believe are you know they are definitely not a good thing for our younger generation i'm talking about school-aged children here who are again regularly see vaping around in their school uniform going into school and don't don't get me wrong when i was at secondary school going in school there was lots of kids that smoked cigarettes but yeah i'm not saying that all of a sudden kids are vaping and that's always never been a thing but i think the accessibility the colors of the packaging all of that kind of thing does encourage younger generation uh to take up the habit of vaping um and if it makes it more expensive and they can't then you know the younger person might go actually no i can't afford that now that's too much like you know i'd rather get hooked on red bull or something instead you know but you that you see where we're coming out of this it's kind of probably important that it's at an unaccessible price to those who shouldn't really be doing it but others will disagree i understand if you're someone that's listening to this it just feels like another sort of nanny state type thing more tax on something totally understand that viewpoint as well but i take it from the viewpoint of if it makes 10 000 fewer children vape because it's

45:14Lee Boyce: more expensive then it's a no-brainer lee's tip of the week don't start smoking kids don't start

45:21Georgie Frost: kids my tip of the week is don't vape okay my tip of the week is 100 this weekend to go and do some energy meter readings which sounds frightfully dull but we are in a position now where the price cap has risen this week it's probably going to go up quite a lot in january latest forecast that's suggesting around about the 2 000 pound mark could be more than that so you want to make sure that you're on top of your energy usage as we come into the winter months now where we're going to be more reliant on heating and other things around the home and how consumption gets much bigger and you want to see what tariff you're on with your supplier and whether there is a fix available that is underneath that 2 000 pound mark and actually this week there's been some quite strange energy tariffs launched including one by lloyd's bank randomly which i never thought was a sentence i'd say but go and have a look around see what's out there and make sure that you're not overpaying and make sure that you're insulated as much as possible from a potential even higher price cap in January.

46:21Lee Boyce: Good tip. Right, that is it. Thank you, Helen. Thank you, Lee. Thank you for listening. You can keep up to date with all the latest breaking money news. Just go to thisismoney.co.uk or download the app. And if you have any comments or questions to the team or anything you'd like them to look into, Lee?

46:34Georgie Frost: Yeah, you can email us at podcast at thisismoney.co.uk. You can X us on X and you can also leave comments wherever this lives. So in our article story, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you like, leave some comments and we always like to rate them.

46:50Lee Boyce: And if you like our podcast, why not rate us wherever you found us? It helps other people find us too.