ALEX BRUMMER: Labour's big pension lie... They claim to be the party you can ... trends now
Prior to the New Labour general election landslide of 1997, I learned through reliable City sources that the party's Chancellor-in-waiting, Gordon Brown, and his economics adviser, Ed Balls, were planning a tax grab on Britain's pension funds.
Working in secret with the now-defunct accounting firm Arthur Andersen, they were framing legislation that would scrap the tax relief that corporate Britain enjoyed on dividends paid into company pension schemes.
The estimated £5 billion a year that the government would raise via this ploy would then be used by Brown to fund New Labour's electoral promises.
At the time I was working for the Guardian, and when Brown learned that the paper intended to publish my findings, the man once dubbed 'the Big Clunking Fist' by Tony Blair put intense pressure on the publication to hold fire or face dire consequences when New Labour came to power. Cravenly, the Left-leaning paper pulled the story.
Former Prime Minister and Chancellor Gordon Brown. I learned through reliable City sources that the party's Chancellor-in-waiting, Gordon Brown, and his economics adviser, Ed Balls, were planning a tax grab on Britain's pension funds
It soon became clear why Brown had become so irate. The measure, which was a key plank of New Labour's first mini-budget, has had devastating consequences.
It effectively killed Britain's gold standard defined benefit schemes — which paid out a specified pension or lump sum — stone dead.
Labour loves to trumpet the notion that it is the only party to be trusted with our retirement, reminding us that Labour was behind the 1946 National Insurance Act, which created the universal state pension.
But the fact is that nothing could be further from the truth.
All the signs are that, like Brown before it, a Starmer government will wage a savage war on pensioners and their living standards.
Earlier this month, it emerged that Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves's new tax tsar, Sir Edward Troup, had previously described pensioners as 'codgers' who have had it 'ridiculously good'.
He also said it was a 'complete disgrace' that pensioners do not pay National Insurance and 'ridiculous' that they received free TV licences.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer. All the signs are that, like Brown before it, a Starmer government will wage a savage war on pensioners and their living standards
Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves in Blackpool. Earlier this month, it emerged that Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves's new tax tsar, Sir Edward Troup, had previously described pensioners as 'codgers' who have had it 'ridiculously good'
And this week, the Labour leadership weaponised the Conservatives' effort to make work pay through cuts in employee National Insurance Contributions (NICs) by launching a highly misleading campaign that seeks to put fear into the hearts of older voters by claiming that the scything of NICs will somehow rob them of future benefits.
As Reeves refused to oppose Chancellor Jeremy Hunt's plan to wipe two percentage points off NICs in his November 2023 autumn statement, this amounts to yet another U-turn by Labour, which has turned them into an art form.
In his March budget, Hunt went a step further by slicing a further two percentage points off the jobs tax — a change that put £900 back into the pocket of the average employee — and revealed that it was the Tories' goal to abolish the charge altogether.
Reeves has sought to portray this as an unfunded £46
