Work ONE Day – get a Pension of £32,000+ for life!
Whilst our Parliamentarians have presided over many pension disasters in their time it seems that their biggest current concerns are not to be reserved for the poor people who may work for forty years or more only to then find their pensions practically worthless – due to badly performing pension products or inappropriate advice etc.
Neither are their concerns to do with the proposed auto-enrolment of national pension schemes which sadly may do little in real terms to improve peoples lives due to their relationship with means testing.
No, the one issue that’s making Parliamentarian’s fume just now is that of ‘grace and favour’ pensions. As hard as it may be to believe, the holders of the three offices of Prime Minister, Lord Chancellor and Speaker qualify for a full pension after just one day in office.
Not for them the undignified route many of us have to take, i.e. forty years of hard graft trusting that there will be a shiny pension pot tucked away for us at the end of the rainbow when we finally get there.
In pounds shillings and pence – these ’special’ pensions pump out an annual retirement income of between £32,000 - £47,000 for these Parliamentarian’s. This is because under current legislation these folk are entitled to an annuity up to half the value of their annual salaries. Were you or I wishing to retire with a similar income it would require us to stash away at least £1.2 million in our pension fund before we cold even come close.
Not bad for a days work – what do you think?
Yes, a great deal of Parliamentary time has been spent on simplifying our pension system and ensuring that millions of non-savers get auto-enrolled into saving, even if pensions are not a suitable vehicle for many - yet it would seem that our politicians really do know a good pension scheme when they see one after all…
I don’t know how the great debate on grace and favour pensions will turn out but it’s interesting to watch. Let’s see whether Gordon Brown really does close this privileged form of pension provision for a very elite few or whether other more pressing politics will continue to keep him on the ropes to such an extent that this drops to the very bottom of his current embattled ‘To Do’ list.
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