Different approach needed to deal with pension provision

COMMENT

One of the saddest features of the past decade has been the demise of the company pension scheme.

Normally, children look forward to their generation being better off than their parents. They are on the shoulders of the previous generations, and expect to keep the gains of the past and add their own advances. In the case of guaranteed income in retirement, there is a danger we are going backwards. Many final salary pension schemes have been killed or wounded by a lethal cocktail of higher taxes, more regulation, and poor investment returns. The decision to tax the funds did not help. It hit the funds directly, taking around £5bn a year from them. It hit them indirectly, by making ...