I am keen to help the FT , I count Jo Cumbo and Mary McDougall as next door neighbours up here in London and they have put out a call to FT readers.

I got a rap on the wrists with the newly expanding Mary McDougall only yesterday for failing to credit her on one of my blogs so I will do her a help by asking you to behave like FT readers (you may be).

The issue is that of all the things that Torsten Bell and Rachel Reeves are planning to raise cash from, pensions looks an obvious target. Do you really need a cash sum from your pensions and should it really be over £250,000 as a tax free cash sum?

People are looking to get their money out in advance of November 26th when in extremis, the Exchequer could announce an immediate diminution of the Lump Sum Allowance

The plea from Mary to her readers can now be extended to my readers.  It appears that providers are finding it harder to pay us back our money than to take it.

But some pension providers are struggling to keep up. If you’ve been caught up in delays, please get in touch at money@ft.com. We will only publish your name with your permission.

So please Mary out. She clearly has some evidence and who would be surprised. Readers of this blog can not have failed to notice Tom McPhail saying he’s taking his (not insubstantial) tax-free lump sum.

Tom is an expert and I expect some people rate me  a pension expert too, I took my tax free cash to pay off my mortgage this time last year. I have written of why I did it, it is legal and the rumours are that the early encashment of cash is happening a lot.

Nonsense rumour-mongering from so called experts

Yesterday there was a wave of horror at a CDC launch when Torsten Bell was mistakenly understood to be flagging that he was going ahead with the abolition of tax free cash altogether. What he actually said was that abolishing the use of a pension pot to avoid paying inheritance tax was not a proper use of a pension. This was taken as a broad hint that along with promoting CDC, Bell (who is leading the team putting together the Budget measures) is going to go for 100% pension measure. I was listening with some intent and this is not what Bell said and the Pension Minister has said nothing to that effect.

Have you left it too late?

If you are struggling to get your money it is almost certainly because your provider was not geared to do it. My provider (L&G) were brilliant and I needed nothing more than a digital instruction to get the money straight to my banks.

The problem is that not all providers are the same and  some are not stress-tested for this kind of run on cash withdrawals. It’s a VFM thing.

A good test of the VFM you are getting from your provider

If ever we are to get a proper view of the capacity of providers to be rated for the value we get for the money we pay them it is now. Again to give L&G credit, they tell me how much I pay them to look after my money every month

Those are my last six months of payments.

It took me 30 seconds to access them and I reckon them VFM. This provider does what I need to be done and I had no issues when we had the same problem worrying over Lump Sums last year. Perhaps you might conduct your own VFM assessment on the money you have with your provider.

I have another provider (Nest) who I do not dare approach right now. The difference in the quality of service between the two is immense. Thankfully I am not in need of more cash now my mortgage is paid off! I hope this helps Mary McDougall and all the other readers who follow these things.

I hope that Tom McPhail’s transaction was done smoothly too!