In the present furore over Gordon Brown's first Budget in 1997, regarding withdrawal of tax credits from pension funds, I should like to point out the following.

For decades, while employees continued to pay into pension schemes, employers were taking "pension holidays", paying nothing and relying on taxpayers' money subsidising them.

Pension funds continued to swell by these means and the trustees became complacent, allowing bad investments such as in the dot.com companies, which everyone could see were piling up losses.

In 1995, I was working for a national accountancy firm which not only encouraged its own employees to leave the final salary pension schemes and go into the more risky money purchase schemes but were writing to their client companies advising them to do the same.

My firm was not unique in this regard. Financial advisers were brought in to suggest where individuals might invest their own pension "pot" and the Far East stock market was favourite at the time.

This collapsed a few years later.

The problems of the pensions industry go back many years, well before Gordon Brown's Budget.

  • Joan Moorhouse, chair, Brighton and Hove Older People's Council, The Brow, Brighton