A suggestion for the Tony Blair Institute

Apparently there should be a grand new scheme for pensions. Which, by centralising pension fund investment decisions would make it much, much, easier for the political classes to direct pension fund investment decisions. Even if no one else does we see a little problem in that.

But here’s what makes this plan rank well up there in the Annals of Chutzpah:

A series of changes were made in the early 2000s to a UK pension system that, while imperfect, was largely working for both its members and the companies that sponsored them. There were three specific changes that had a profound negative impact over the following two decades and leading to the situation we have today.

First, in 1997 the government eliminated the dividend tax credit to encourage companies to reinvest profits rather than pay them out in dividends. An unintended impact of the move was to make it less attractive for UK pension funds to hold shares in listed UK companies.

Second, in 2003 legislation converted what had previously been natural risk-sharing between employers and employees with respect to pension payments into a “hardened” contractual obligation for companies, covering all obligations of their pension funds.

Third, with pension-fund obligations now having the status of a hard liability for employers, the Accounting Standards Board introduced new requirements for UK companies to include pension-fund assets and liabilities on their balance sheets. Through this change, assets would be shown annually at prevailing market value (that is, with no allowance for future returns) and, crucially, total future pension liabilities would be discounted by, in effect, a fluctuating long-term bond rate.

That is, Britain had a perfectly good pensions system which was entirely and wholly ruined by the government of the time - Proprietor one T. Blair at that very time. However much bullied by one Brown, G., that was who was PM. The answer to the problems created by this is a New Grand Plan from the new minions of Blair, T., which will entirely solve everything and have no ill side effects unlike the last one, no siree!

Please do call us Mr. Picky here if that’s the way you want to roll but we just can’t help but think that perhaps undoing the past mistakes, now they’re properly identified, might be a better idea than making a whole load of new mistakes.

Perhaps that’s Mssrs. Picky given that we use the communal voice here.