Of all the various varieties of pension, the State one alone has remained unchanged; in principle, that is. When it was introduced in 1909, the minimum age was 70 (and 95% of the population didn’t make it that far), and you’d be means-tested to get your five bob a week. The minimum age is heading back towards 70, and should be 82 for parity. As for the rest: final salary pensions, dating back to Victorian railway companies, gone; retirement annuities, gone; executive pensions, gone; stakeholder pensions; gone; the inclination of most of the population to save without compulsion, never really been there. And the reason for the demise of pensions? Government tinkering and tax raids. So, as has oft been said, what we need is continuity and some settled thinking, please, Ms Reynolds MP. What are we likely to get? Sadly, I suspect, more tinkering and taxing. But what do I know?
“Why the UK’s workplace pension needs urgent reform”
Workplace, or auto-enrolment pensions were of themselves a reform, an attempt to reintroduce some form of compulsion to retirement savings.
