‘We paid in, you pay out’ women’s pension injustice campaign.
Trudy Baddams is the founder member of a women’s pension injustice campaign. Today she writes in our Dear Editor section.
I am the founding member of a women’s pension injustice campaign group called ‘WePaidInYouPayOut’, we’ve been running for about 3 years now with a membership of 9,400, our main objective, in the beginning, was to gather information, facts and figures to share and hope that someone would take note.
I became rather obsessed with the Freedom of Information website and bombarded them with questions to the extent they flatly refused to answer anything further, they used the term ‘vexatious’.
The fact that everyone kept saying that to sort out this injustice was too expensive, they didn’t have the money, I was determined to find out why.
Before I was banned I asked a simple question about the surplus in the National Insurance Fund and I was shocked to learn that the surplus had been used to pay off the national debt, I was furious and word soon got around, I found that we have the National Insurance Fund which our contributions are paid into and the surplus from this is moved to the National Insurance Investment Account which can be used for anything including national debt, but further, down the road, David Drew Mp found that money was actually still there in the Investment fund and that further money had been paid in.
The National Insurance Fund used to be ring-fenced for pensions, benefit and the NHS, this stopped a good few years ago and the Investment Fund was set up and I have since found this.
“The Commissioners for the Reduction of the National Debt (CRND) are responsible, in accordance with Section 161(3) of the Social Security Administration Act 1992, for the investments of the National Insurance Fund Investment Account (NIFIA). They are authorised to invest in accordance with directions given by HM Treasury and in line with the Memorandum of Understanding between HMRC and CRND.”
Women are angry, this is the money taken direct from their wages, from the age of 16, it is deferred pay, their employers pay NI contributions for them too and the NI fund can be wittered away on a whim, or remain in the account to gain interest and use the interest for anything other than their pensions they paid into for anything up to 50 years. Women have seen their pension age increase from 60 to 66 with little to no notice, some found out as they claimed their pension on their birthday, others found out 2/ 3 years before they expected to retire at 60.
Trudy Baddams
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When I left full-time employment 1992 to become a stay at home mum, I wasn’t allowed to pay into a private pension because i wasnt earning. Yet my husband could increase his. I was told to open a savings account. WHY?
You can still pay into a private pension if you’re not earning, my friend had one in the 80s/90s, when she was a stay at home mum.
Oh where to start. Trudy Baddams misunderstands on various, fundamental, points. Facts are as follows:
State pensions have never been, and are not deferred payment. They are a social security benefit to which people are entitled once they reach their State Pension Age, subject to their NI record.
The NI Fund is ringfenced for state pensions and some other benefit payments.
The NI Fund does not fund the NHS, never has. Although 20% of NI contributions go to the NHS, and never hit the NI Fund.
The NI Fund is not used to pay national debt. Every penny paid into the NI Fund is used for its intended purpose, and paying national debt isn’t one of those purposes.
The NI Fund must have a statutory reserve at all times, of 1/6th of the expected annual expenditure. The expenditure currently stands at around £100bn, thus the reserve must be at least £16bn at all times. This reserve gets invested in Government Gilts in the NIFIA, where it earns interest. The interest gets credited in full to the NI Fund. £179 million last tax year. See audited NI Fund accounts which are publicly and freely available.
It appears that Trudy Baddams thinks that people’s NI contributions are saved up for their later, own use. This is not how the state pension system works, and it was never designed to work like that. It’s a PAYG system, meaning roughly that this year’s contributions pay for this year’s state pensions and other benefits.
Lastly, the State Pension Age increases did not happen with little notice. The main increase was announced publicly in 1993 and put into law in 1995.
All those FOI requests and Trudy still doesn’t understand how national insurance works….
It’s high time that a responsible journalist put paid to this nonsense propagated by Trudy Baddams . It’s not difficult to do , as the nature and mechanics of the NIC Fund is in the public arena , including how surpluses can be utilised to off-set National Debt interest , and how doing so in no way jeopardises or affects entitlement to the State Pension benefit. But let’s not let facts get in the way of a good story ! So many 50’s born women are being mislead by this nonsense. They deserve better than the myths and falsehoods perpetuated by this lady.
I’m afraid Trudy Baddams is very wrong about the NI Fund.
The NI Fund is completely ring-fenced to pay pensions and contributory benefits. The surplus consists of statutory reserves of 1/6 outgoings, which the Fund is is obliged by law to maintain, plus any extra money that is not disbursed in the course of a calendar year. If the reserves fall below 1/6 of outgoings, the Government tops them up from general taxation. Between 2014 and 2016, it provided £14.2bn to the NI fund to rebuild its reserves, which had been depleted by the deep recession of 2008-9, the slow recovery and a sharply rising number of pensioners due to longevity increases and baby boomer retirements.
In the past, the reserves were invested in gilt-edged securities (government debt), which is the safest and most liquid sterling investment available in the marketplace. However, the Coalition government moved the reserves into an Investment Account at the Government’s Debt Management Office. The DMO is the government’s internal bank, and the Investment Account is similar to a bank savings account. The DMO pays interest on the account, which forms part of the NI Fund’s income. The funds are “on demand” and can be withdrawn by the NI Fund at any time.
Like any other bank, the DMO uses deposits as funding for its own spending. Doing so reduces its need to issue public debt to fund spending. The NI Fund’s reserve’s thus reduce the public sector borrowing requirement. In that sense, they can be viewed as “reducing the national debt”. But if the NI Fund needs to draw on its reserves to pay pensions and benefits, for example if NI contributions fall due to a recession, the DMO will cover the gap by issuing public debt. Thus, if the NI Fund draws on its reserves, public debt rises.
I hope this is clear.
Regardless of how NI is administered, the gender pension gap is 39.9%, more than twice the gender pay gap. This heartless policy has driven many women into despair, particularly those on low incomes and divorced, single and widowed women. Women are more likely than men to rely on their state pensions, many not having any other source of income. Poverty is a problem facing women as they age. This is a well-known historical fact. What a society we live in when grandmothers have to march on the street for their state pensions, one of the very lowest in Europe to boot. We will.fight this to the very, very end.