Can Ros meet Toby's Care challenge?
Money Marketing reports today on Toby Strauss' publicly vented frustration with MPs dodging the pensions freedoms impact on care funding. Speaking at the launch of Scottish Widows’ retirement report in London this week, he cited a general unwillingness to address the issue.
Whilst Steve Webb apparently wasn't too keen either at dealing with the elderly care side of the pensions freedoms equation, maybe we have greater grounds for optimism now Baroness Altmann is the Pensions Minister. If you're interested in what she's had to say on the matter before, check out her blogs
- on 20 Jan “Policymakers must wake up to the care crisis”, and
- 2 Feb “Let’s have new tax incentives for care saving”
Any champion of older peoples’ rights knows paying for long-term care was a problem before pension freedoms. Now it can only a bigger problem for some, if the reason they cashed in is they were desperate for the money (or worse some scamster was…). And the prospect of cashing in annuities too magnifies the problem still further.
I don’t know if the Baroness and the Widows' boss agree on the solution, but they seem to agree on the problem and its urgency.