Osborne's lifetime allowance plans are deeply unfair

Given the state of Britain's finances, you might think Osborne's cut to the lifetime allowance is reasonable, says Merryn Somerset Webb. It isn't.

Let's start at the beginning. What's the point of a pension? We all know the answer to that question from a saver's point of view: we use pension wrappers so that we can save tax-free for our retirement.

As far as we are concerned, the more tax relief the better, as more relief means more money to spend in our old age. But look at it from the point of view of the state, and things are different.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.