Brooks slams Chancellor's pensions record

Brooks Newmark today joined Conservative Members of Parliament a vote of no confidence in the Chancellor's handling of Britain's occupational pension schemes. Brooks Newmark today joined Conservative Members of Parliament a vote of no confidence in the Chancellor's handling of Britain's occupational pension schemes.

As a member of the cross-party Treasury Select Committee, Brooks has regularly crossed swords with the Chancellor regarding his record of failing pensioners.

But, although there have been other contributing factors, including steadily increasing life-spans and the poor performance of the stock market, the changes to the £5 billion annual raid on pension funds has been one of the major causes of the decline of British pension provision.

He said, "The Chancellor's cynical raid on pension funds over the last 10 years has been estimated to have cost ordinary pensioners up to £100bn. He has now been shown to have acted against both the advice of his officials and the business community - and the result is quite simply that pensioners have paid the price.

Now that the full cost of removing the dividend tax credit is becoming clear he is playing a game of duck and cover instead of giving the public the answers that they deserve. Ministers first tried to blame the change on lobbying by the Confederation of British Industry; then when they were caught out, they had the temerity to say that they thought pension funds would be better off as a result of the change. That is clearly nonsense."

The Government cannot get themselves off the hook by pleading the benefit of hindsight. The very first Parliamentary Question that Tony Blair answered as Prime Minister warned him of the serious potential consequences of a windfall tax on pension funds. He said in reply that 'the windfall tax will not harm pensioners at all.'

I prefer the verdict of the former Labour Welfare Reform Minister, Frank Field, who has said "when Labour came to power we had one of the strongest pensions provisions in Europe and now probably we have some of the weakest."