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The Third Way
Following on from yesterday’s BeeLine I thought I’d let you know that I’ve posted another piece onto the Pensions Minister, James Purnell’s, weblog at the DWP (I know; but I just can’t stop myself). It’s a short, sharp version of that BeeLine with a link to the BeeHive attached so that the minister and his team, and the members of the public who are following the minister’s blog, can read in detail the points that I am making. The minister has been pretty good at coming back on the issues I’ve been raising so far in this interesting set of exchanges that now seems to be known by everyone I meet as ‘the battle of the blogs’; let’s hope the DWP keep up their openness and respond to these detailed points and suggestions. It’s important they continue to engage in this debate now, because I think we’ve passed the posturing stage of our discussions and now have a real chance of talking through the real-life issues that are driving the current set of so-called reforms to our pension system. It is obvious from our daily flood of e-mails to the BeeHive that many of the tens of thousands of you who read the BeeLines every month are very interested in the outcome of this battle of the blogs. I do hope my next BeeLine on this subject will be made because of a positive response by the minister or his team, rather than my having to put out a BeeLine under the title of ‘The Sound of Silence’, or something equally, and if so unfortunately, apposite.
The text of my posting today onto the minister’s weblog is as follows:
James,
Thanks, again, for responding to my concerns with your recent blog entry ‘Credit Where Credit’s Due’. In that you say that your view is we really only have two avenues open to us if we want to ensure that a pound saved in a pension is worth a pound:
- We could provide everyone with a ‘universal pension’ of something like £114 a week, but that would come at an unacceptable cost. Or,
- We could be fair to savers, but only by condemning millions of existing pensioners to a lifetime of poverty.
I am quite shocked to hear that in the Government’s considered view the choices facing us are so stark and limited and would like to know why such conclusions have been reached without other avenues having been properly explored first. I have published a paper on my BeeHive website outlining a way by which modest pension savings made by people could indeed maintain their real value without the Government running any real risk of having to unnecessarily pay means-tested support to wealthy people as a consequence. That paper is too long to be posted as a comment to your weblog, but it can be easily accessed by clicking on the following link: How many ears?
I would be very interested to hear whether you agree with me that there are indeed other avenues that we could usefully explore, such as the one I’ve outlined in my paper, that perhaps may lead us to a better outcome than the crazy choice between unacceptable cost to us all or unacceptable meanness to poorer pensioners that you claim is the only way we can be fair to people saving hard-earned money for their retirement.
Steve Bee
27 October 2006
I’ll let you know what sort of response we get from that posting as soon as anything happens. Hopefully it won’t be painfully obvious from the title of that future BeeLine…
27 October 2006
Source: Department for Work and Pensions Pensions Reform blog 23 October 2006
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