The beginning of the end for many personal pensions was on 17th March 1998. This was the date that Gordon Brown had his first full budget as Chancellor. He entitled his speech New Ambitions for Britain but he made some rather dramatic changes which have come back to haunt him and will do so I have no doubt for the rest of his life. I would rename that day as the "The day I plundered the pension of the ordinary working man" because that it is exactly what Gordon Brown did. At a stroke he eliminated the ability of pension funds to reclaim Advance Corporation Tax on their dividend income. Gordon Brown did not only set in place a dramatic fall in the income and thereby the value of pension funds he also helped lay the foundations of the fall in the UK stock market through out 2001,2002 and 2003. His actions of hitting the tax credit and therefore reducing the income of the pension funds also made it more difficult for them to stay solvent and his actions undoubtedly did not help the collapse of the ill fated Equitable Life. But the results of his actions go further than this as many with profit pension funds such as NPI (National Provident Institution) came out of the equity market completely. So once you have various big players coming out of the market never ever to return are you then surprised that the Stock Market went down. Whilst NPI were under pressure to safeguard their policy holders in the long term this decision is a disaster for people with pension funds with NPI. NPI has been taken over by the Pearl and I quote from one of their recent publications. "Since 2000 investment returns have been poor and as a result asset share values have been reduced. As a result of the significant falls in the stock market from 2000 through to 2003, National Provident Life Ltd sold almost all of its equity investments in order to safeguard their ability to pay the guaranteed amounts promised on policies. Since that time, the fund has mostly invested in fixed interest investments". The point of all this is that pension funds grow by reinvesting the dividend income and Gordon Brown reduced that income in 1998 by a very large amount. If he had not done so all the pension finds would have been in a much stronger position. Indeed they would have had far more funds to invest in the equity stock market so probably quite a lot of the stock market fall is attributable to Brown. This ruination of our Pension Funds is tragic not just for those who in later life will find that their pensions are much reduced or those who are now claiming these much reduced pensions. Pension funds used to be good long term investors and ones who would invest in floatations and up and coming businesses such as start ups. There was a time before Browns meddling where the pension funds were long term investors in British Industry and would take a long term view in their investing and with that comes safety, security and prudence. In the House of Commons recently when David Cameron challenged Gordon Brown in Prime Minister's Question time, Gordon Brown denied, yet again, that he had any part in the decline of private pensions in Britain. He pointed out that the pension industry as a whole was in surplus before the stock market fall and you can not blame him for any deficit. He makes no sense and yet again he refuses to take one jot of responsibility for his own actions. Documents released on 30th March 2007 under the Freedom of Information Act from Her Majesty's Treasury show that Internal Treasury forecasts, advised that the changes would "cause a shortfall in existing assets of up to £75 billion" and that "employers would have to contribute about an extra £10 billion a year for the next 10 to 15 years to get pension scheme funding back on track". The documents that were sent to the Chancellor before he did away with the dividend tax credit in 1997 also advised that the worst effected victims would be the poorest members of society. This is the man who cannot see a speck of saw dust in his eye but he sure can see a 6 foot plank in every body else's. So as he says it can not be his fault as it is the markets fault but what he forgets or perhaps does not know is that the pension industry has,in the past,survived much harder stock exchange crashes. I think that what he knows about pensions can be printed on the back of a postage stamp or a pin head. Plainly he is a total financial disaster who blusters his way in an argument but you can not fool all of the people all of the time and this is I think is one of his greatest mistakes that will haunt him for the rest of his life.
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