A job for the next chancellor: abolish the pensions annual allowance taper

The government is consulting on the pensions annual allowance taper that is wreaking havoc in the NHS. Much better would be to simply abolish it, says Merryn Somerset Webb. And not just for the NHS.

An NHS doctor secures his face mask © Matthew Lloyd/Bloomberg via Getty Images

(Image credit: An NHS doctor secures his face mask © Matthew Lloyd/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Good news: the health secretary has launched a 12-week consultation into how it can mitigate the tax nightmare the pension annual allowance taper is causing the NHS. Bad news: it seems very unlikely that it will address the underlying problem.

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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.