Of course the SNP have nothing to do with how long Scots live but they could do something to help Scots get better pensions for their shorter lives.

This morning I am going to Westminster to see Kirsty Blackman about CDC. Who is Kirsty Blackman? This is a reasonable question for most people who don’t live in Scotland. I found out thanks to Ashok Gupta who introduced us. She is an MP for Scottish National Party and their spoke person on work and pensions.

I have been looking forward to this meeting for a few weeks as she came bounding over to me , at the end of a meeting at Chatham House, shoved her details in my hand and asked me to talk to her about CDC. I want to talk about CDC to someone who wants to listen! Even more, I want to hear from them how they feel about getting paid a pension not a pot.

Of course MP’s get paid a defined benefit pension linked to their salary and guaranteed by tax-payers, but not so many of their constituents are like them. Infact most Scots like the people to the south of the United Kingdom, are getting pots of money. Most of us don’t know how to turn pots to pensions and sadly, most of us put the money into cash that sits in cash acco0unts to draw down easily but messily and usually with a lot of tax to pay.

I’ll find out if Kirsty Blackman feels that the current DC workplace pension is doing the majority of her working constituents and indeed those in Scotland, the best deal going; or whether she wants something more like a pension for them (and perhaps her in future). Until recently there could be no workplace pension for working Scots but that is changing with CDC.

My “big idea” for her is that Scotland should have a CDC plan for itself. This is not for me and Pensions Mutual to run, it is something for those who are enthusiasts in Scotland and this is why I think Scots need a geographically defined workplace pension.

According to  National Records of Scotland who last released data for 2022-4

Scotland continues to have the lowest life expectancy of other UK countries.

This is what Neil Walker wrote about last year in the Scottish Daily Express. Here is what it means for Kirsty Blackman. It means that it costs less to buy an annuity in Scotland than in the rest of the UK and a CDC pension would cost less (if they had an underwritten CDC pension).  To build up rights to a pension through deductions from pay over a career works better than purchasing an annuity.  The rate of conversion from pay deduction to pension  are better for “sick man” rates , rates based on Scottish mortality numbers than those for the UK as a whole.

Put another way, Scottish people are getting a worse deal from their State Pensions, their Defined Benefit workplace pensions and will do from annuities based on UK mortality rates. The Scots , because they are “sick men” will subsidise workers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland unless they have a CDC pension scheme for them.

I know there are those who argue that each person should have underwritten pensions paid to them based on their life expectancy and that postcodes you live in can define how likely you are to die sooner or later. The Scottish National Records tell us

• In 2022-2024, life expectancy was highest in East Renfrewshire, and lowest in Glasgow City for both females and males.

• Female life expectancy in the most deprived areas of Scotland was 10.5 years lower than in the least deprived areas in 2022-2024.

• Male life expectancy in the most deprived areas of Scotland was 13.2 years lower than in the least deprived areas in 2022-2024.

• Life expectancy was highest in remote rural and accessible rural areas and, lowest in urban areas and remote small towns. The difference between the most rural and most urban areas was 2.6 years for females, and 2.9 years for males.

These discrepancies between the best and worst in Scotland suggest that it is those who live and work in the built up areas of Scotland who could get a lower pension than they might from CDC, if they are part of UK wide schemes.

The majority of working people live in the large conurbations and that’s where the large employers are. So why not think about setting up a multi-employer pension scheme for the “sick men of Western Europe”.  (Women are included in this phrase).

Do people think about these kind of things outside of actuarial circles. I don’t think they think in these terms but they know that they don’t live as long as other folk.

If you live in the most deprived areas of Scotland and/or employ folk that do, then you should want a pension that pays you and your colleagues more;- based on the group of you (and your spouses) getting a pension paid for shorter.

This is not for me to tell Kirsty Blackman MP, it is for me to explain by way of making thinking about CDC grounded in the grim realities of older age. If we think we are all in it together, we haven’t learned the lesson of devolution, that Scots do not like subsidising people in other parts of Britain and now have the way of thinking of themselves as a different group.

Scots could benefit from their own pension. The SNP can help Scottish people get a fairer deal from a devolved “CDC” workplace scheme.

This may be no more than fantasy; a Scottish CDC scheme may never happen; it may be deemed impractical, but even mentioning it to Kirsty may spark an interest in CDC  for deprived people who historically have had nothing designed for them. I mean those who the National Records of Scotland show have special need of a pension for them.