The government published three reports at once, yesterday. There was a Green Paper outlining government plans, noteworthy mostly for what was not in it. There was an Inland Revenue report on the tax changes necessary to change from the current regime, where you get just one chance to start taking a pension based on what you have accrued, to a regime that allows that to happen incrementally. (Avoiding the so-called "cliff-edge" of retirement). There was a report on OPRA - the Quinquennial Review. You can read all these from the bottom of the Links page of our website.
I knew there was a chance I would be asked to comment on radio so I dutifully watched the Parliament TV channel while the Minister, Andrew Smith, recommended the Green Paper to Parliament. (Predictable stuff, including Conservatives blaming stealth tax, Labour retorting that Conservatives would keep that tax.) The reports went up on the web as the minister was speaking and I read some hundreds of pages. So, all geared up to say what should have been in the Green Paper, I awaited the call.
Very late afternoon it came, inviting me to the Television Centre in White City. (Maybe they always decide their invitees at the last, or maybe those above me in pecking order dropped out.) By this point there was only time to rush to the studio, which is why you folks had no advance notice of the program.
When I got there I found out the format was to be a presenter asking questions of three of us - a couple of experienced commentators and me. Also found out that they didn't have much use for my erudition - the producer was looking for the human interest angle of IBM and my pension.
The discussion itself wasn't perfect from a cognescenti point of view, eg not enough distinction between "closed entirely" and "closed to new entrants" but this was not the occasion to pick holes in the presenter's phrasing. Hopefully, a few more people now know what a Pensions-In-Payment policy is and that IBM's is unique.
The biggest surprise to me was how impromptu and informal it all was. The studio has a big round table with a mike in front of each chair and monitors to read from in front of some. All the mikes are live all the time and people just walked in, sat down and talked. None of us knew what the others were going to say until they said it. I wouldn't want to put ideas into terrorist minds but security was slight. Nobody there knew me but I wasn't asked for identity. I was allowed to carry an uninspected briefcase into the live recording.
There is big gap between what the public knows and what there is to know about pension mechanisms. I have no idea what Radio Five Live's audience at 11.15 pm is comprised of but I'm sure only a fraction of them know that there is such a thing as a Pensions Ombudsman and of those only a fraction know about his limitations in respect of justice. Still, these popular programs are better done than not done.