Individual Savings Accounts
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of treating savings in lifetime ISAs in the same way as pension funds when calculating savings limits for means tested benefits.
Answered by Sir Stephen Timms
There are no plans to change the way savings held in a Lifetime ISA are treated in the assessment of means-tested benefits including Universal Credit. The value of the pension fund that someone and their employer pays into protects that person for retirement, and it is right whilst they remain below state pension credit age, that the value of that fund is disregarded when assessing entitlement to means-tested benefits.
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