Former Labour Chancellor Gordon Brown unleashed the war of attrition way back in 1997, when he scrapped tax relief on pension firms’ dividends.
His spiteful move destroyed gold-plated workplace final salary pensions, by making them too expensive for companies to run.
Sadly, Brown is far from the only offender. In the last decade or so, a string of Conservative chancellors have ordered one brutal assault after another.
The pensions lifetime allowance, which caps how much you can build up in a pension, and the annual allowance, which limits the amount you can contribute each year, have been cut three times and are now frozen.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak played his part when at No. 11, while Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s Spring Budget on March 15 is rumoured to include an attack on pensions tax-free cash and an inheritance tax raid on pension funds at death.
On a different front, the state pension age has been hiked to 66 for everyone, and will start rising to 67 from 2026.
Shortly after that it will rise to 68, and carry on climbing thereafter.
The Government justifies its blitzkrieg by saying our pensions are unaffordable as society ages. Yet one category of worker seems immune to the crackdown.
Can you guess?
That’s right, our Members of Parliament.
MPs continue to enjoy hugely generous pension benefits that they have denied to the rest of us.
While HM Treasury unleashes pensions terror MPs’ own retirement packages remain immune. It’s sheer hypocrisy.
On top of their basic salary of £84,144 a year, they enjoy gold-plated defined benefit pensions that pay guaranteed, inflation-proofed income in retirement.
In the private sector, these “gold-plated” final salary schemes were smashed to smithereens by Gordon Brown. Most workers’ pension values are at the mercy of today’s hugely volatile stock market.
No such worry for MPs.
They build up pension rights worth £16,500 a year after just 10 years in the job, according to research from investment platform AJ Bell.
It would take the average private sector worker a staggering 49 years to accrue the same retirement income.
That makes MPs’ pensions five times more generous than ours.
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An Express reader reminded me of this injustice a few days ago, writing to point out that Brown’s stealth pensions tax raid “in no way affected a single MP, Minister or Secretary in the government or opposition”.
He noted that MPs also earn hugely generous perks and allowances on top, including allowances for upkeep of an office, staff wages, travel allowances (first class), residence in London or constituency and taxi fares.
The House of Commons also has its own swimming pool, gym, squash courts, shops, hairdressers, post office, five-star restaurants and pub, “all heavily subsidised by the taxpayer”, the reader added.
To be fair, it’s not just MPs who are immune to the war on pensions.
Most public sector workers also enjoy final salary schemes that are deemed unaffordable for the vast majority of private sector workers.
Their total value is £2.6trillion, which is larger that the UK’s annual economic output.
As the war on pensions intensifies, it seems that we are not it altogether. Our appointed representatives are relaxing far from the front line, having made sure that they are out of the line of fire.
And we’re paying for them.
