IMO all down to the 1%, the shareholders wanting to keep up growth at any price. The less people you have, the less goods and service you need which results in less people needed in work. That's fine, until Shareholders realise that will mean less dividend and they can't be having that. Growth year on year, regardless of the situation, is what they demand and government gives it to them. The falling birth rate means the UK has to get immigrants in or the shareholders will complain. EU migration is being replaced by non-EU immigration. Not exactly a step forwards is it.
Pensions? Of course, the UK needs more people in work and paying taxes in order to fund pensions. That's a given. Take a look at countries like France, Netherlands, Germany and others and you will see that their version of NICs are paid into pension funds. It's not current taxpayers forking out the pension money. Pensioners paid into the fund all their working life and that "pot" pays out more than the UK pension. In NL the full state pension is now €16734 a year. Taxed at 20%. Having paid contributions over less than the prescribed number of years, my state pension is a proportion of that. Idem ditto my UK state pension. Works pension on top of those. France and Germany don't have a flat rate. There is a max of around €28K. What you actually get in state pension is based on lifetime average annual earnings. To get the max you need a lifetime average earnings of just under €80K. As you can see, comparisons are hard to make due to the different systems used.

