What’s behind the 2014 Budget’s planned ability to simply let pensioners cash in their pensions?

It definitely overturns decades of logical government incentives designed to encourage private and occupational planning to provide retirees with an alternative to the bleak option of dwindling reliance on the state.

Unfortunately, the very people that need the protection a pension provides will almost inevitably en-cash it, blow it, and return to the state with empty outstretched hands. A cynical vote winner and foil to the UKIP it maybe, with short term revenue gains. But with breathtaking myopia ends up with horrific long term social consequences.

– Roger Berry, Managing Director of Concept Group