Cold Bath
Yoo-hoo, down there in Bath, are you looking after my pension? Yes, I know I stopped working for you 20 years ago, but I was in the scheme, and I'm still around, so I hope you are. Anyway, just dig out the file and have a look, because whatever those pension fund contributions are worth, Norman Fowler is about to push through a law, making you top them up by five per cent a year or by the rate of infla-
tion, if that is lower. I don't suppose you'll enjoy it — the CBI certainly kicked and screamed for long enough — but I don't suppose it'll break you, either. Most pen- sion funds have seen their investments go up, while the number of people they will have to provide for has gone down. And if we are both alive, that is something to celebrate in itself, because employers are mortal, as well as employees, and in the last 20 years any number of companies, small and great, have passed the stage when they are able to contribute to their creditors, let alone their pensioners. To see how Norman Fowler means to pursue them beyond the grave, we shall have to wait for the small print. Perhaps the burden will pass to the funds or their trustees, the idea of a funded pension scheme being that it should not fold up when the employer folds up. I hope that the trustees will still be slogging on, and that they have the means to administer the fund, and to chase around for all the people who left years ago, and who may, years hence, learn something to their ad- vantage. Michael Meacher, for Labour in Parliament, says that the reform does not go far enough and I am sure that Norman Fowler thinks so too, which is why, any week now, he will chart the way towards portable and personal pensions.
Previous page
