pension raiding gordon brown

tali

is gordon brown legally allowed to take /steal 5billion each year from pension funds?, surely in european courts it could be argued as a abuse of privelage at the very least?
Lower rates of pay for women and higher retirement age for men were overturned by european courts- and these were cast in stone for many decades, likewise bosman ruling in football.
if joe public and an obscure footballer can be legally perceptive and have their day in court what where the billion pound pension industry doing?
Some because of browns carte blance attitude have been plunged into retirement poverty i would have thought that would have been covered by human rights laws aswell

EdInvestor

Amazing how many people go on about Gordon's so called "theft" ( net effect, 0.5% less growth per annum to the pensioner) but said nothing whatsoever when the pension industry forced up the cost of stakeholder pensions from the Govt imposed 1% p.a to 1.5% p.a.

That is, 0.5% less growth per annum to you the punter.Exactly the same.

One is a heinous crime, the other is never mentioned.

Funny, isn't it. :rolleyes:

dunstonh

Funny is how it's taken 8 years for some people to realise. Maybe it should act as an incentive to people to take an interest in public affairs and politics.

is gordon brown legally allowed to take /steal 5billion each year from pension funds?,

He isnt. The tax credit changes affected every tax wrapper as well as unwrapped investments. PEPs, ISAs, shares, investment trusts, unit trusts etc were all effected. Indeed, you could even pass some of the blame for endowments to the removal of the tax credits as it is estimated that the FTSE100 is around 1000 points lower because of it.

but said nothing whatsoever when the pension industry forced up the cost of stakeholder pensions from the Govt imposed 1% p.a to 1.5% p.a.

Whats that got to do with anything? Retailers can charge what they like for their products. Next you will be wanting people to complain when the cost of baked beans goes up.

That is, 0.5% less growth per annum to you the punter.Exactly the same.

Wrong. The extra charge was for 10 years only. Not every year.

Lower rates of pay for women and higher retirement age for men were overturned by european courts

The differential in retirement ages was deemed unlawful. So, the female state retirement age was increased. Not quite the same as the "higher retirement age for men" being deemed unlawful.

Andy_L

tali wrote: »

is gordon brown legally allowed to take /steal 5billion each year from pension funds?

Yes, in the same way he's allowed to take 22/40% income tax earnings, 11% NI, etc etc. There the government. It what they do, deal with it.

peterbaker

Why do people bang on about the stupifyingly insignificant 5 billion per annum? That's small change compared to the total amounts invested.

The real culprits in the pensions theft fiasco are the directors of the employer companies who didn't realise how to steal pensions until Maxwell showed them how, and the conniving trustees and financial advisers who then helped them close and wind up Defined Benefit schemes, helped asset strippers and foreign parent companies ride roughshod over TUPE regulations and divide and conquer deferred members by takeovers, redundancies, transferred and outsourced administration arrangements and all manner of other jolly wheezes before the government finally began to twig and slammed the door long after all the biggest horses had bolted. The whole thing was by then ripe for neglect and overcharging by the fund management industry who blamed everyone but themselves for poor performance and dwindling funds. They just love it when someone says Gordon and the £5bn p.a. is to blame.

As for collapsed or failing schemes, the ASW pension case was a complete red herring really. Dr Ross Altmann allowed it to be the leading case in her arguments for far too long. As a result the public were conned into thinking the numbers of scheme members affected was five figures or six figures and therefore identified and manageable with a piddling little government Protection Fund initiative. In reality the scale of the problem has numbers in it probably of the same order of magnitude as the real numbers of recent immigrants to the UK that we are are only just learning about this week in 2007! In the early years of Altmann's campaign (which I will grant is probably better than no campaign at all!) I found it hard to work out which side she was on. I thought she was an industry stooge at one point. I think she finally worked out her arguments only quite recently. Maybe three years were lost because she failed to include in her sights the perfectly healthy employers who were simply breaking pension promises left right and centre without fear of litigation. ASW is a worthy case but it is not a good example of pensions theft because ASW went bust and that brings it's own problems. Most pensions theft was achieved by perfectly healthy employer companies and the only significant private sector Defined Benefit schemes that remain are generally the ones that have a small number of very brave trustees who stood up to employers wind-up demands and threats to leave enormous black holes long enough for the government to introduce new legislation to force the employers to start dealing with those same black holes by coughing up the cash they had deliberately withheld for some years. Sainsburys scheme is one such I think, and Maersk Shipping is perhaps another which had responsible union representation as well as good trustees, and in the Maersk case I would also say that the Danish owners still had a heart at the end of the day.

As for the rest ... you can't lay that at Gordon Brown's door, oh no, just look in the eyes of the employer directors first, and then tell us what you see there. I'll tell you what I saw: In 2002 I was threatened with a defamation action by a substantial and still very successful previous employer, and the trustees of a scheme in the process of wind-up. I ultimately told them to stick their grievance where the sun doesn't shine, and they backed down. I got the same outfit to rectify some blatant misselling of the money purchase arrangement they wheeled in to replace the old scheme and then said no more other than generally complaining about the wind-up and nor did they. They just continued to wind-up the scheme and finally did so in 2004 just before the law changed. As far as I know, the case is still easily open to further complaint action. I made no decision about where my raided and 'rug-pulled-out-from-under' funds went and the trustees just defaulted them into some scheme and washed their hands and walked away. I am looking forward to the day when particularly the 'trustees' who so easily leant their name to the duty shortly before they were asked to vote for winding up their respective schemes in their trust, and the so-called 'independent' financial advisers who so easily took commissions for an active part in recruiting the original DB members like me, then took commissions again for the winding-up and buy out policies all begin to fear the shadow of large scale class actions against them. I don't think we will need to wait too much longer actually. Maybe one or two might then realise that accepting large salaries in return for leaving their scruples at the door might ultimately mean they wont after all be able to afford the school fees, the big house in the country, the flat in the city, and the converted farmhouse in the Dordogne for much longer. Or perhaps they have been canny enough by now to get some dumb insurance companies to cover the risk retrospectively with some weird and wonderful new Pension Scheme Trustees Liability and Legal Defence Expenses / Defamation Action Expenses package which is funded indirectly by a reduction in the budget allocated to current employee's pension arrangements. Either way, I think we shall soon see.

I don't much like Gordon Brown, but this isn't something you can pin on him except perhaps if you think he is the cause of the 'light regulatory touch' which tempts so many to flout all standards in pursuit of the money god.

tali

okay i have to admit that 5billion pa is peanuts i know it and the world and his wife knows it , but the media just keep banging on about this figure again and again to the point where its insignificance has become momumental and hence my anti-brown persusion

dunstonh

It's easy to dislike Brown. The sooner we have a general election the better. However, the tax credit issue is not a valid reason to hit him over the head. There are plenty of other things to use.

The media love the £5bill a year figure as they can label him the pension fund robber and all sorts of similar things. It doenst matter if there is any truth in it or not.

If the media is that concerned, why arent they highlighting the reduction in contracting out rebates which is genuinely costing the public money both now and in the future. Contracting out was meant to save the Govt money in the long term and put consumers in control of their pension. The reduction in rebates is a stealth tax as you would be hard pushed to find anyone that actually knows how much their contracting out rebate is. So, Govt can reduce it and save a fortune now and its the consumer that loses out. However, millions of people have contracted back in so there is less rebate being paid out now (thats also good for Gordon Brown now as its less to pay the pension providers). The consequence though is that state pensions will be much higher in the years to come.

A classic case of a Govt taking the money today and pushing the problem into the future when it wont be their problem any more.

EdInvestor

Perhaps people would like to know how much is spent on tax relief for pensions?

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/stats/pensions/table7-9.pdf

You might be a bit surprised.It's a lot more than 5bn. Not forgetting the NI figure at the bottom.

Be careful what you ask for.