Amazingly, the private pensions paid in that same year were very slightly less – at about £35 billion. In other words, not one penny of private pensions paid in that year was at cost to the private pension sector: all were paid at cost to the government.
Our guest writer is Richard Murphy, founder of the Tax Justice Network, who regularly blogs on UK taxation issues at Tax Research UK
There’s an item of government spending which has been subject to almost no review, which with only the very smallest of changes, recently announced in the Comprehensive Spending Review, will carry on at its existing level, apparently unchecked and beyond government control, and which amounts to the biggest and most ineffective subsidy to an industry that we have perhaps ever seen.
I’m talking about the subsidy that is given each year by the UK government to the private pension industry. As my research has shown, the total cost of tax relief for pensions in the UK – all of which arise because of the need to support the private pension sector – amounted to about £37.6 billion in 2007-08.
Amazingly, the private pensions paid in that same year were very slightly less – at about £35 billion. In other words, not one penny of private pensions paid in that year was at cost to the private pension sector: all were paid at cost to the government.
This is an extraordinary circumstance. The finding is exacerbated by the knowledge that despite the fact that stock markets have paid no net returns for more than a decade the private pension industry remains dedicated to investing in them, whilst directing less than 15 per cent of their funds to lending to the state.
It appears that as a result of the massive state subsidy they receive the private pensions industry has not learned anything from the radical upheavals seen in the real economy, or in investment markets. What is clear though is that this failure to learn has been at cost to the members of those pension funds – many of which are in deficit as a result – and to the state.
The result is a revelation. What we can see, if we look at the pensions industry in this way, is that the current private sector model of pension supply is hopelessly inefficient. It has required a state subsidy to deliver any return at all – and that return is quite amazingly less than the subsidy received.
Over a decade maybe £300bn of state subsidy (half of all state borrowing immediately before the current financial crisis erupted) has gone into the pensions sector despite which the sum it manages has fallen on at least as many occasions as it has risen even though the scale of private contributions was roughly double the subsidy given and all pensions paid were at effective cost to the state.
There is only one explanation for this phenomenon. The state subsidy for private pension contributions is very clearly being captured by the pension industry and its related elements in UK banking and insurance companies to be claimed by them as fees that have massively supported the profits they make, whilst leaving those who might be dependent upon UK private pensions at risk of poverty in retirement unless the state continues to subsidise their pensions to the extent of a £1 subsidy for each £1 of pension paid.
As an intermediary the UK private pension industry is an utter failure: it adds no value at all in this process according to this evidence. That suggests that now is the time for radical reform of pensions. The proposed new National Employment Savings Trust (NEST) pension scheme to be introduced in 2013 will not be the answer. It was built on the foundations of the Turner report, which was written before the financial crisis erupted, and which assumed that the financial markets would pay increasing returns for ever.
What are those solutions? Well, first I make clear that I’m not asking for a withdrawal of pension tax relief. I think that would be unwise and create far too much disruption to the pension industry. But a subsidy of about £38bn a year from the UK government should have conditions attached.
Fundamentally that condition should be that a significant proportion of all pension contributions should be invested in ways that ensure that the funds entrusted for pension investment are used to create new jobs – with a bias to the UK to the greatest degree possible within the constraints of EU law.
This would mean that the funds in question would have to be invested in new share issues by companies that could show that the proceeds of the share issue were to be used to create new products and employment; in bond issues such as those Colin Hines and I promote to be used to replace Private Finance Initiative (PFI) and to fund local authority infrastructure and for infrastructure funds such as a genuine Green Investment Bank.
If this were to happen then we estimate that at least £20 billion a year of new investment funding would be released into the UK economy. The impact would be dramatic: this is the kickstart that the UK economy needs to get real job creation going again.
The funding is available. The political power to direct it exists. What is required is the will to use it for right purpose. That’s what has to be created.
26 Responses to “Private pensions industry is an utter failure and needs reform”
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Tax Research UK » Pensions: a guest blog at Left Foot Forward
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william
Ash,’we put a proportion of our earnings into a big pot…to ensure there’s money there… It’s called a PONZI scheme. The biggest one is in inthe US,closejy followed by the UK, and it is called Quantative Easing.
Ash
william –
Well, I’ve never heard paying taxes described as a ‘Ponzi scheme’ before! I suppose it is, in the sense and to the degree that ‘investors’ (taxpayers) only see a return (either in cash in the form of pensions & benefits, or in kind in the form of public services) if new investors keep putting in more money. But 1 – much of the money paid in taxes is genuinely *invested* in things that help ensure new investors can generate money to put in (infrastructure, education etc.) and 2 – whereas Ponzi schemes collapse because they run out of new investors, there’s always a new generation of taxpayers to pay for the pensions and old-age care of the previous generation.
I’m not quite sure what the thrust of your reply is, though. What you said originally was not that there was something structurally wrong with the whole idea of paying taxes, but just that you thought you’d paid so much in taxes that you were subsidising other people.
Tim Worstall
Dear lord almighty. Richard really does manage to get himself very confused.
“In other words, not one penny of private pensions paid in that year was at cost to the private pension sector: all were paid at cost to the government.”
No. The “subsidies” were to people putting money into their pension pots this year. This is what will fund pensions in the future. The pensions paid out this year are funded from money that was put into pension pots some years ago. We need to compare the pensions being paid out this year with the subsidies that were given when the money, some years ago, was put into the pensions pots.
It really is a bit off when we’ve got an accountant apparently ignorant of the concept of accruals.
“The finding is exacerbated by the knowledge that despite the fact that stock markets have paid no net returns for more than a decade the private pension industry remains dedicated to investing in them, whilst directing less than 15 per cent of their funds to lending to the state.”
As I pointed out when Richard first published his little report: he managed to ignore dividends on that stock market return. This is akin to ignoring interest payments on bonds, ie, insane.
“Fundamentally that condition should be that a significant proportion of all pension contributions should be invested in ways that ensure that the funds entrusted for pension investment are used to create new jobs”
Essentially Richard is insisting that pensions must be invested in venture capital. This is asw a result of his entire ignorance of why we actually have secondary trading of shares in the first place. But then he’s never been quite up to speed on either economics or finance.
We have secondary trading because it allows people to get out of the investments they have made: for example, after they’ve been saving for 40 years and want to start getting a pension.
Finally, just to cap tha absurdity of the entire wibble, he’s forgotten to inform everyone that pensions contributions are not a let off of tax, they’re not a subsidy, they’re a tax deferment. For you have to pay tax on the pension you receive at the end. Nowhere in his numbers does Richard include this tax paid currently on pensions being received, nor does he point to the tax that will be paid in the future on those pensions currently being saved for.
Amusingly, one Spad wrote to me when Richard’s report first came out:
“Is it me, or is it the case that he has compared what the pensions industry pays OUT in any one year, and looked at how much relief is given (i.e. is paid IN), and compared the two, and used that to justify saying “this shows what a ripoff they are”?
because that would seem nuts to me”
Yup, it is, it’s nuts.