Originally Posted by Chris

Actually pensions are a slightly different issue. While they may be a 'benefit' in the broadest sense, they're a class apart because it is more or less inevitable that you're going to get one (unless you die) and it is very, very difficult for any government to make any meaningful difference to the number of recipients or the size of the payment, due to the inevitability of old age and the need to allow for private individuals to make long-term retirement plans that take account of the likely size of the state pension. Any attempt to reform pensions would of necessity be radical.

Benefits for working age people are a different matter entirely. A lot of things can be changed with the aim of paying less money, or no money, to anyone who ought to be able to support themselves. In this area, the amount saved by, say, allowing fiscal drag to reduce the value of tax credits or JSA may be small in the immediate term, but in the longer term the expectation that these benefits will be worth less, or harder to get, will reduce the number of people who are prepared to pass over a potential job and result in a larger saving.