SoSaturnistic makes the following post on the SDLP website:

In recent years the pensions landscape has changed radically and in often undesirable ways, all while leaving old problems unaddressed. The way your retirement is handled is one of the few things that is fundamentally in doubt in these Westminster elections. Pensions and welfare policy is, in large part, still set by politicians in London before being carried over to Stormont. Therefore it’s important to get things right then and there before we have to make moves to fix mistakes in our Assembly.

Recently, I had the privilege of securing wide-ranging support for pensions reform in my report The Future of Pensions which can be read here. We did the hard yards and took a deep look at the system that impacts all of us, whether you are actively employed and trying to save up or if you are one of the approximately 300,000 pensioners who reside in the North. What we saw, and what we need to fix, is quite important.

We found serious flaws. Pensioners have been given a poor deal by successive Tory/UUP Governments on two counts. First, they scrapped the state pension and suddenly replaced it with a system that immediately left at least an estimated 120,000 pensioners immediately worse off, the Negative Income Tax (NIT). For reference, past reviews on pensions have consistently recommended 10 years of notice for such changes.

This payment is means-tested and granted on the basis of taxable income, and given that your pension pot withdrawals are taxed that means there’s no longer any truly “universal” payment even if you worked for decades or deferred taking state pension to boost the payment you would get under the old system. This doesn’t even take account of the loss of support like Winter Fuel Payment and various tax reliefs.

Not only did the Tory/UUP Governments immediately leave hundreds of thousands in the lurch with their shift to NIT, they also have radically changed the annual payout over different budgets without any sort of consistency that one would expect with a pension payment; for ages we have enjoyed a pensions regime that saw payments consistently and securely increase to offer pensioners a bit of peace of mind. That ideal has been obliterated by their rank mismanagement of the situation.

Yet it’s not just the state pension system that’s broken as there is much to fix within private savings. It’s complicated to navigate as workers now expect to take on up to eleven different pension pots across their entire lives. Auto-enrolment, while successful for many, has consistently left out those who are on low pay and work multiple jobs as well as young people who ought to have a fair chance to build up savings.

Tax relief is granted in a regressive and expensive manner for the Exchequer as withdrawals are not tax-exempt while contributions are; this tends to benefit the wealthiest among us as they can simply draw down income from their pension pots at a level just below the personal allowance, which has also swelled dramatically in recent years. The way tax relief is granted and the exclusion of those on low pay creates an unjust situation where thousands of the most vulnerable are essentially excluded from being able to save up and aspire for a secure retirement.

We still see headlines which highlight the rampant abuse and mismanagement of workplace pensions schemes; our Pensions Regulator does not have the power to take on these abuses and it knows and has openly said as much, writing to Ministers to seek greater powers to protect workers from reckless executives who, driven by short-termism, simply choose to not fulfill their obligations.

Much more can be said about this, and I encourage all members of the public to do their research here.

The SDLP, having been at the heart of this review, is therefore proposing the following solutions:

• Lump-sum compensation for the tens of thousands of pensioners who were immediately made worse off in the shift to NIT. Compensation for radical pensions reform is not a new idea and has gained serious traction before in the much-covered case of the WASPI women. Now it’s time to right another grave wrong instigated by the Tories.

• Guaranteed year on year increases in the pensions payment in line with the CPI, to prevent inflation from eating away your pension payment.

• A digital pensions dashboard with all your pensions information to help you make your decisions on your future in retirement.

• Bringing in more people into the auto-enrolment system by lowering the minimum age to 18 and lowering earnings thresholds. This will help young people and those on low pay build up savings.

• Making withdrawals of pensions tax-exempt while putting tax on pensions contributions, similar to how ISAs are currently structured. We’ll use the savings from this change to help cover the cost of a new capped “pensions bonus” which will see the State contribute a defined amount for the amount of savings you put in. This will shift the benefits of tax-exemption away from the wealthiest and towards ordinary people who currently miss out on these gains.

• Ensuring that pensioners abroad can access the system on similar terms to what they could enjoy before the shift to NIT. If someone moves down South it’s important that they continue to have the right to take pension payments as this is reciprocated under the Common Travel Area.

• Beefing up the powers of the Pensions Regulator to protect workers who have savings in defined-benefit schemes. In the North there are thousands of workers in such schemes and they are most vulnerable to poor treatment by unscrupulous executives, as we all saw with the BHS debacle some years ago.

This plan will leave the overwhelming majority of people better off, save those on the highest incomes who have used the current tax relief system to dodge tax. It will bring back real security within our social security system and it will empower people to make choices about their future while having the peace of mind that their financial plans won’t be ruined—be it from a State which has violated its obligation to the people or from executives who mistreat their workforce.