Of course this rule will be useful for the few who still buy annuities.
But it is no use at all for the millions who have been forced to buy one and the many of those who have been given ghastly deals because they were unaware that a better income was to be had elsewhere.
And those who believed they might get the opportunity to extricate themselves from an appalling annuity deal had those expectations quashed after government ministers and insurance industry bigwigs contrived the stitch up at Gleneagles, which saw plans for a secondary annuity market dropped.
Yes there were dangers. But many people who were forced to buy an annuity that to them was practically worthless have now been abandoned and left without hope.
Two rules for pensions
Is it not amazing how quick ministers are to shut what they see as loopholes in other people’s pensions while consistently turning a blind eye to their own?
Hence the limit for defined contributions for those who have taken cash from their pension will in many cases drop to £4,000 from £10,000 per year.
Yet chancellor Philip Hammond has followed his predecessors in failing to do anything about MPs continuing to receive defined benefit pensions subsidised by the taxpayer.
I was once informed by a Labour minister that these were justified because MPs could have such short careers. He seemed blithely unaware that many people in the outside world are also forced to change job or career often without benefiting from a single day’s defined benefit pension.
Rule one for being a government minister: Do as I say, not as I do.
Tony Hazell writes for Daily Mail's Money Mail.
hazell@gmail.com
