If this is pensions reform, then back to the drawing board, Mr Brown

10th October 2006
By Noel Whiteside

This summer’s much-heralded white paper on pensions promised ‘the biggest renewal of our pension system since Clement Attlee’s government implemented the Beveridge reforms’. Behind the rhetoric, sad to say, the government’s proposals prove to be nothing of the sort.

In particular, the trumpeted improvements for women offer far too little to correct the gender bias inherent in current British pensions. So what is the problem? Thanks to their longer life …