How do you fix the ‘social care crisis’? The traditional answer is, commission a few reports, set up a committee or two and hope you’re voted out before you have to do anything about it. Boris has promised to fix this, too, ‘once and for all’. An over-40s tax would, perhaps, be popular with the under-40s, but doesn’t get around the basic problem that someone has to pay in the end and it won’t get any cheaper; they can’t pay the carers any less or they’d be doing it for free. Here’s my solution. Remember National Insurance? It’s become just another tax, but the original concept was great, the government as a National Insurer to which you paid your ‘premiums’. So put up the premiums. Why reinvent the wheel? But they will. Of course.
“Record year for annuity sales driven by advisers”
I was asked this week whether annuities are now ‘a good investment’. They’ve been recommended very rarely in recent years, since ‘pension freedoms’ allowed pretty much unlimited drawdown on pension funds and anything left to be passed on to beneficiaries free of Inheritance Tax.