“They’re all, fat and old, queuing for the House of Lords” – Joe Strummer
Paternalism (or parentalism) is behavior, by a person, organization or state, which limits some person or group’s liberty or autonomy for their own good. Paternalism can also imply that the behavior is against or regardless of the will of a person, or also that the behavior expresses an attitude of superiority.
Thus spake Wiki.
The worst kind of paternalism is the “Daddy knows best” sanctimony and I exhibit to this court three prime examples;
- The Rubenstein/Webb Heath-Robinson DA scheme (not worthy of Wallace and Grommit).
- The Annuity trading kite flown by Webb in today’s Sunday Telegraph
- The use of KPMG and Bridge by the DWP to discredit the Dutch CDC model.
For the grisly details, you’ll have to read my last three blogs but here’s the big picture.
Pension Policy in this country is delivered top down. Since the person at the top – the Pensions Minister is typically incompetent, we have virtually no effective pensions policy in the past thirty years.
This changed with the arrival of Steve Webb, but as he approaches the glide path to 2015, effective policy is giving way to nutty posturing.
Much as I would like to see Webb as pension minister (perhaps from the Lords) , I can see McClymont as a very effective successor. Especially because Gregg does not appear to have caught DWP paternalism (yet).
So how to recognise the symptoms of this insidious malaise
- Watch out for smug self-satisfied smile, resulting from receipt of latest pensions benefit statement
- Listen out to waffle about listening to focus-groups clamouring for pensions certainty
- Be prepared for serene “pope-like” demeanour when confronted with radical suggestions.
DWP paternalism is a charming reinvention of Humphreyism, that well documented paralysis that afflicted effective government from series to series of Yes Minister.
It is the Japanese Knotweed that has found its way into every potted plant in Whitehall; but nowhere is it more prevalent than in Caxton House.
Lock me in the Tower and call me Watt Tyler but I would like to challenge this end of term croneyism between Webb/Rubenstein/Churchill and De Bruin.
What has been set in train, the reforms of the Basic State Pension, Auto-enrolment and the impending interventions into the provision of workplace pensions, is brilliant.
But so long as these mandarins continue have us believe that those with limited savings , must be protected by unaffordable guarantees, I will rattle the bars of my cell and blow raspberries all the way up the Thames to Westminster.
We need proper reforms of the decumulation of DC pensions and we need it now. We don’t need another iteration of DC banking (the Wallace and Gromitt stuff), we don’t need traded annuities and we certainly don’t need to consign targeted money purchase to the DB departure lounge.
People with small pots should be offered the same opportunities as those with big pots, collective drawdown can start with pots as low as £25k provided we decumulate collectively. Guaranteed annuities are an option but they do not need to be the only option and targeted money purchase is a perfectly reasonable approach to DA which does not need to be quashed by a couple of ancient judgements (KPMG and Bridge) or a sorry paper (Gad 2009).
The people who DA and workplace pensions would benefit are those who are denied access to the quality pensions available to the judges who delivered KPMG and Bridge, to GAD, to the officials of the DWP and to the Minister himself.
Rather than tell us what we can’t have, how about listening to us.
Paternalism (or parentalism) is behavior, by a person, organization or state, which limits some person or group’s liberty or autonomy for their own good. Paternalism can also imply that the behavior is against or regardless of the will of a person, or also that the behavior expresses an attitude of superiority.
