Tuesday 10 February 2009

Polly attacks the TPA

A good piece by Polly Toynbee on the libertarian righties at the the Higher Rate TaxAvoiders' Alliance. As she says, the Other TPA is much more sensible... :-)

PS. how about this for a bit of deviousness from the TPA on pensions 'apartheid':
If you want more on the scale of the divide you can read our report (PDF) on public sector pensions or the Institute of Directors' recent report (PDF).

Quoting the IoD report as if it strengthens the TPA's position is really weak, given that the IoD report was written by someone who worked, until very recently, at the TPA. Desperate!

2 comments:

Matthew Sinclair said...

We suggested people could read the IoD report if they wanted to find out more about the scale of the difference between private and public sector pension provision. That's rather different to citing it as a source of authority. We're asking people to decide based on detailed accounts of the facts, not the organisations who support our position.

Although, it isn't like the IoD will put their name to a report like that without other members of staff signing off on it.

Tom Powdrill said...

Hi Matthew

I don't consider the TPA report on council pensions a detailed account of the facts, since it includes some fundamental factual errors (such as claiming that most public sector schemes still have a normal pension age of 60) and a rather confused message. It reads as a politically motivated attack on the LGPS and other public sector schemes with little grasp of broader pensions policy.

I say this as the report isn't even clear on what IS a reasonable type and level of pension provision for the public sector. It simply attacks what is there currently. This is done by reference to what is increasingly the norm in terms of private sector provision, but this presupposes that emerging private sectcor provision is any good - which many people would dispute.

There are plemty of other places you could direct people who want to have a look at these issues objectively. The Pensions policy Institute or the Pensions Commission's reports are two obvious examples. To direct them instead to another report repeating the same line as your own (and which may even have been written by the same person?) is pretty weak innit really?

Tom