Should the state pension be means-tested?

Means testing the state pension would prove vastly complicated and intrusive, says Merryn Somerset Webb

High angle view of a piggy bank and colorful pie chart on pink background
(Image credit: Getty Images)

In the middle of the second century AD, a young man wrote to his father in Egypt. Apion, son of Epimachos, had just reached the Bay of Naples, where he intended to join the Roman army. He wanted his parents to know he was safe and also that he had renamed himself Antonius Maximus. This, says Richard Abdy in his book Legion: Life in the Roman Army, would have been done “in anticipation of his eventual retirement” and consequent rise in status. 

Assuming he made it through 20 years of battle and travel, he would have been awarded Roman citizenship and a pretty attractive retirement plan too – one with the equivalent financial value of between 10 and 13 years’ pay. Happy times. Also expensive times. Soldiers’ pensions were cripplingly expensive for the Roman state, making up anything from 50%-80% of all state spending (depending on which historian you listen to). This led to all sorts of fiddles. Emperor Augustus put a new tax on inheritance. The amount of time soldiers had to serve before they got their cash was also extended. 

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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.