As if the Karma Police weren’t busy enough, we have more work for them!

Legal & General, like Hargreaves Lansdown. have found a way to demand money of us to swell their coffers in aid of narrowing the gender pay gap.

L&G say “give us your money”

One solution , according to L&G , is for Government to change the rules

“We are.. making a call for regulators and lawmakers to look at reform; including dropping the minimum age of auto-enrolment, abolishing the auto-enrolment minimum salary threshold and providing further support to help families with childcare costs.”

Of course! Force women to pay more into their pensions and fill up those nasty little pots.

Call the Karma Police!

This is self-serving nonsense from L&G. The gender pay gap does not ease because low-earning women aren’t saving into L&G pension pots!

We cannot have a DC system providing gender pension equality until we have gender pay equality. Career earnings of women are on average much lower than men because of the life choices that women are required to make. Apart from the biological implications of giving birth, there are societal norms about childcare which have developed over centuries and are not going to change at anything but the “glacial pace” that L&G worry about.

Which is why smart friends of mine think of pensions as a household item and urge us to think of the joint pensions of a household as equal possessions, as the house is an equal possession – when jointly owned -regardless of whose pay is used to service the mortgage.

If women felt they owned half their partner’s pension, they would not feel as financially vulnerable as they do. It is a lot easier to change attitudes over the ownership of pensions (especially if households split) than it is to engineer equal pension entitlement.

Call the Karma Police and arrest L&G’s marketing department! They are imposters, fake feminists, greedy for easy assets from pension taxes from the lowest earners. Rather than playing nicely and helping women combine their small pots, they want to strip them of what little disposable income that comes their way, to turn small pots into profitable pitchers.

What women need to get even is a proper share of the households’ assets, including a right to half the pension assets. They need a full state pension , independently of their partner and they should not need to go to court to get it.

Where women choose to have financial independence, they should not be patronised by hand-outs but paid on merit and on the responsibility of their jobs

Then there’s this

“We know that women feel significantly less confident, and are more likely to struggle on knowing where to start, when it comes to making financial decisions. Industry and government must therefore work together to ensure education and engagement around savings and investments increase. For example, too few know about the flexibility that couples have in being able to contribute to their partners’ pension while they are on parental leave. This is something that can significantly reduce a women’s pension shortfall.”

We’re using that same facility that Hargreaves Lansdowne were suggesting to sort the gender pension pay gap. Men pay into woman’s personal pension – queue MaPs

If you are not earning enough to pay Income Tax, you can still receive tax relief on pension contributions up to a maximum of £3,600 a year or 100% of earnings, whichever is greater, subject to your annual allowance.

For example if you have no income you can pay in £2,880 and the government will top up your contribution to make it £3,600.

Another person, like your partner, could also pay into your pension for you.

Note , MaPs do not make a big deal of that final paragraph because it hardly ever happens because the earning partner is usually struggling to pay into their pension when the spouse has no earnings. This fixation with equalising pot sizes is down to the insurer’s myopia. For Legal & General , just as with Hargreaves Lansdown, the pension gender pay gap is measured  by the size of the DB pot.

But the pots of two common law partners are a joint asset just as are rights to pensions. just as are the the illiquid assets of house and home and it is infinitely more important that we help women claim their fundamental right to half of these household rights than chase the chimera of equal  independent liquid assets.

As a man, with a fair amount of pension owing to me and a substantial DC pot to my name, I am fully disclosing my pension income and wealth to my partner and she is doing the same to me. It is our mutual non-destruct treaty, stopping us press the nuclear button of separation! And frankly, I feel considerably better about having equal rights to what the future brings than I do in trying to even any gender pension gap between us.

I call on the Karma police to enforce full disclosure .   We plead innocent – 1 Coleman Street is the other side of the City officers!