Britain should put an end to state pension provision to the rich and spend more on benefits for the poor, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has said.

Speaking to the Financial Times, the thinktank suggested ending state pension payments to the wealthiest five to 10 per cent of the population to allow the government more scope to assist those at the lower end.

At present, the system dictates that anyone who has paid national insurance for 30 years is eligible for the state pension, irrelevant of their wealth.

OECD deputy director of employment, labour and social affairs Mark Pearson said that similar to other countries, the UK is facing increasing costs of an ageing population, with more pensioners and less work age people.

“Faced with these pressures, are you going to ask people of working age to pay more, or people to work longer before they can claim their pension,” Pearson asked.

“Or another way to ensure an adequate pension is to think about whether the pension should only be paid to those who really need it, to ease the tyranny of the maths. Giving less [pension] to the people at the top would free up resources to increase general benefits.”

The state pension has also taken the spotlight recently in the upcoming general election campaign, with current Prime Minister Theresa May refusing to address whether her party would scrap the triple lock.

On this, Pearson told the Financial Times that the triple lock should be terminated as it puts “one group in society [pensioners] on a pedestal over another”. Instead, he suggested uprating the state pension by average earnings or prices.

The OECD noted that the UK retirement benefit, which is currently a basic state pension income of £6,359 a year and £8,296 for the new state pension, introduced in 2016, is one of the least generous of its 35 member countries.

The current state pension spending is expected to increase from 5 per cent of GDP in 2021-22 to 7.1 per cent of GDP by 2066-67, the UK’s Office for Budget Responsibility has predicted.

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