The project’s PhD student, Thomas Gould has published an interesting post on the Economic History Society’s blog, The Long Run. His topic is ‘Financial Neoliberalism: British insurance and the revolution in the management of uncertainty’.
On 6 December 2017, the University of Bristol’s Thatcher’s Pension Reforms research project in association with the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries held a very well-attended ‘witness seminar’ in front of an invited audience at Staple Inn, London at which Sir Nicholas Montagu, Chris Daykin, Sir Adam Ridley and Marshall Field discussed the the Fowler Inquiry into Provision for Retirement and its relationship to the Conservative government’s landmark reforms to British pensions in 1986. The session was chaired by Gregg McClymont, introduced by Colin Wilson, the immediate past President of the IFoA, and began with a paper by Professor Hugh Pemberton (University of Bristol).
A video of the evening’s proceedings is available (the seminar begins 20 minutes in, after the introductory paper, and the subsequent question and answer session begins 1hr and 22.5 minutes in.
A full transcript of the witness seminar and the subsequent question and answer session is also available.
You can also read the text of Hugh Pemberton’s introductory paper.
The Thatcher’s Pension Reforms project is very pleased to announce a witness seminar to be held on 6 December in association with the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, Arts and Humanities Research Council, and the University of Bristol.
Staple Inn, High Holborn, London, 6 December 2017 from 5.30 pm to 7.30 pm. Registration (with refreshments) from 5 pm. Buffet supper 7.30-8.30 pm.
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Chris Daykin
Marshall Field
Lord Fowler
Sir Nicholas Montagu
Sir Adam Ridley
Chair: Gregg McClymont, Head of Retirement Savings, Aberdeen Asset Management.
If you wish to attend the conference please register here.
Two briefings are available:
Women Against State Pensions Inequality (‘WASPI’) are using the general election to wage a very successful campaign pressuring candidates to sign the ‘WASPI pledge’ to support compensation for women born in the 1950s who find that their state pension age is not 60, as many had expected. But though WASPI complains about the short notice of the increase in pension age for this generation of women, it has been a long time in the making. Hugh Pemberton has written a background piece for the History and Policy website which traces the long history of equalisation. That history goes back to the late-1970s (when Barbara Castle was put off by the staggering cost of equalising downwards to age 60) and the early-80 (when Margaret Thatcher was warned that it was an awful lot easier to give a benefit to someone than to take it away). Legislation finally came in 1995, but history indicates that it was both understood as a step towards gender equality and much more publicly discussed than WASPI alleges.
We are pleased to report that Josephine Cumbo, Pensions correspondent of the Financial Times, has joined the advisory board of the Thatcher’s Pension Reforms project.
In 2015 Josephine was the Society of Pensions Professional’s ‘journalist of the year’ for the second year in succession and also won the ‘Personal Finance Education Award’ at the 2015 Santander Personal Finance Media awards (for her investigations into the lack of transparency in the drawdown market — the fastest growing area of the market following April’s pensions freedoms — plus her campaigning work on inequalities in the new state pension). She was also awarded ‘Financial Journalist of the Year’ and ‘Personal Finance Journalist of the Year’ by the Association of British Insurers in 2014 and 2012 respectively. In addition to reporting, Josephine is also involved in the FT pension plan’s governance committee as a member representative.
We are now about 15 months into the project which, following the recent retirement of Roger Middleton and replacement as co-investigator by Dr James Freeman, will now continue until July 2018. Since our last progress report we have found and examined a huge range of documentary material relevant to the pension reforms of the 1980s. We are in the process of making sense of all these documents but here are some highlights of our recent findings:
More details can be found in AHRC TPR Project Briefing Note 3.
In September, and with great sorrow, we said goodbye to Professor Roger Middleton, the project’s co-investigator, as a result of his retirement. We are pleased to report that the Arts and Humanities Research Council has confirmed the appointment of Dr James Freeman as his replacement. James is Lecturer in Digital Humanities in the Department of History at the University of Bristol. He brings to the project his expertise in the changing nature of political rhetoric in postwar Britain and his skills in data analysis and visualisation.
This change in personnel has also led to an adjustment of the project’s end date – which is now scheduled for the end of July 2018.
An extended version of our post on the lessons of pensions history in general, and the lesson of the Thatcherite reforms of the 1980s in particular, for the Treasury’s consultation on pension tax reform has been posted on the LSE British Politics & Policy blog.
What are the lessons of history for the Treasury’s proposals to change the basis of UK pension taxation? The experience of the 1980s signals trouble ahead for both consumers and the state if the changes are implemented.
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In its July consultation paper (Strengthening the incentive to save) HM Treasury outlined its plans to change the basis of UK pension taxation. It proposes to abolish the present system in which people saving for a pension are given tax relief on their contributions but the pension, when it is eventually taken, is taxable. Instead the Treasury proposes to tax contributions but for the pension in payment to be tax free. (Thus moving to a so-called Exempt-Exempt-Taxed or EET system to a Taxed-Exempt-Exempt, or TEE, system). In the Treasury’s view this will simplify the system, increase incentives to save and boost tax revenues.
But history suggest the proposed change is unlikely to achieve its professed long-term aims. Instead it is likely to reduce tax receipts, result in lower pensions for consumers, complicate the system, and decrease saving (in turn producing pressure for higher state spending). The short- to medium-term tax revenue gained by the shift will be vastly outweighed by the long-term costs to the state and to individuals.
Anybody familiar modern British political history will know there is a consistent pattern of short-termist political decision-making that turns out to have unwelcome long-term consequences. Of all areas of policy, pensions are the most long-term and the proposals set out by the Treasury risk repeating such mistakes.
For an example from history, take one of the changes being examined by the AHRC’s Thatcher’s Pension Reforms project: the then Conservative government’s decision in 1980 to link increases in state pensions to the rise in retail prices instead of the rise in average earnings. This alteration, made entirely for reasons of short-term economy, looked small at the time but over the long-term the change, compounded annually, served to slash the value of the state pension from an already meagre 26% of average earnings in 1979 to just 16% within 20 years.
The present proposals will have similar long-term consequences.
We conclude that the Treasury’s consultation documents is an attempt to dress up a policy aimed at bolstering tax revenues over the short- to medium-term as a long-term reform to incentivise pension saving and improve the level of income replacement in old age. It is inconceivable that it will achieve either long-term aim.
We recommend that government should look to the long-term security of British pensioners and resist the temptations of a short-term boost to public finances from abolishing tax relief on pensions. If the Treasury is determined to reduce the cost of tax relief on pension contributions it should instead consider removing higher-rate relief, a costly subsidy to those least in need of an incentive to save into a pension.
Read the full version of our response to the Treasury consultation.
Journalists, policy-makers, etc. please contact Dr Hugh Pemberton if you want a further briefing.
‘Thatcher’s Pension Reforms and their Consequences’, an AHRC’s research project, is very pleased to announce that Gregg McClymont, formerly Labour’s shadow pension minister from 2011-15, has joined its advisory board. Gregg is head of retirement savings at Aberdeen Asset Management, a role that encompasses defined contribution pensions strategy, research and implementation. Before taking up that role he was Labour MP for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East from 2010 to 2015 . He is also a modern British historian, having taken his PhD and taught at the University of Oxford and written a number of publications in the field.