This could be true Mr. Tugendhat, could be true

Too much of our pensions are invested in dead money - bonds - where they sit waiting for interest.

We need to see more invested in live money - equities - where they can support ideas and create jobs.

Not that corporate bonds are dead money of course, they finance companies just as much as equities do. A different layer of the stack possibly but still financing economic activity.

What is meant is that mountain of Gilts, that Treasury debt, which sits in British pensions funds.

And, well, OK. So, why do pensions funds carry those gilts? Why aren’t they in those equities - or corporate bonds. Equities and corporate bonds do carry higher returns, so we’d expect pensions maximising money managers to be in them. Why aren’t they?

Gordon Brown, basically.

He abolished the tax exemption on dividends. He - and the Major admin as well to some extent - also insisted that direct benefit pension funds must hold many more gilts. The two effects together meant that pensions funds did flow out of equities and into gilts. So, if we wish to reverse that process then we should reverse those two actions.

Great, that’s dealt with then.

We might also suggest this as a more general principle for government policy as well. It’s often useful to solve problems by unpicking the mistakes of past administrations. Actually, we think that could well be the most useful thing to be done. Not another layering on of a new and better set of mistakes, instead a removal of the errors of the last lot. Which there must have been, obviously, otherwise there wouldn’t have been that change of power at the last election, would there?