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Occupational Pensions

I beg to move,"That this House has no confidence in the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s handling of occupational pensions." That simple motion reflects the following four simple charges. First, that in his first Budget this Chancellor introduced a stealth tax on pension funds that his own civil servants warned him would blow a big hole in those funds’ finances. Secondly, that in the decade since that Budget that is precisely what has happened; we have seen what the Labour pensions Minister at the time describes as the ““large-scale desolation? of our pension system. Thirdly, that that desolation has left millions with a shortfall in their retirement funds and 125,000 people with little or no pension at all. Finally, that this Chancellor has from the start acted with stealth, blocked all attempts to get at the truth and now blames everyone but himself for the destruction that he has brought to Britain’s pensions. In short, the abolition of dividend tax credits was, in the words of the Prime Minister’s own economic adviser at the time,"““a mad thing to do?" and quite ““crackers?.