People have got used to the idea that when they retire they will be live on a decent pension, but we’re all living longer so pensions cost lots more.

Just think…

How much longer can you expect to live if you are a boy or a girl born in 2004 compared with 1994?

How does life expectancy for girls compare with boys?

Female life expectancy shows a similar pattern

Why do pensions cost more if people live longer?

Why do you think pensions have hit the headlines recently?

Where do pensions come from?

Most people get a pension from:

- their employer because they have contributed to the pension scheme

- the state if they have paid enough National Insurance.

Both employees and the government have started worrying about how they will pay the pension bill.

Most businesses have changed the way they pay pensions so people don’t get as much when they retire.

Lots of people work for themselves and have to make private arrangements by paying into their own pension fund.

Others want to make sure they have a and set up their own private pension scheme to top up whatever else they receive.

The government is still trying to work out what to do. There are all sorts of suggestions including making people work until 67 before they get a pension from the state. The main idea is to encourage people to look after themselves.

Just think…

What are the alternative ways of receiving a pension?

Who pays for pensions?

When the state pays people’s pension - we are all paying for it. It comes out of taxes.

- When you buy almost anything you pay Value Added Tax.

- If you are working you pay Income Tax.

- If you buy cigarettes or alcohol you pay Excise duty.

- If you buy a house you pay Stamp duty.

If pensions cost more, we pay more taxes. worry about increasing taxes because people might not vote for them at the next election. It’s all a challenge - and voters seem to want the impossible. They want good pensions from the government - as well as all sorts of other things like good schools and health care - but they don’t want to pay more in taxes. It doesn’t add up!

Just think…

Why does the government want to limit the amount it pays out in pensions?

Pensions - and you…

It may seem a long way off - but it’s important to know how to look after yourself.

There have been big changes and there will be more.

People often used to go to work for one business or organisation when they left school and stayed there all their lives - so it was quite straightforward. Today people change jobs quite often so have more responsibility for making sure they have enough to live on when they retire.

Prices tend to rise. It’s called inflation. A pension that looks good today might not be worth much if prices have gone up lots so it’s important to build up a pension that will grow as you grow older.

Just think…

When you get a job, what questions will you ask about the pension scheme?

Why is important to think about your pension as soon as you start work?

The Revenue is trying to overturn a landmark court victory which would have cut the tax bills for an estimated 30,000 couples.

The , made late on Friday night, will be a blow to family where one partner does most of the work but the other is paid dividends from the company.

In December, the Court of Appeal ruled couples were free to make these financial arrangements which can cut their tax bill by of pounds a year.

The test case was brought against Geoff and Diana Jones of Arctic Systems, who paid themselves salaries of 7,000 and 4,000, taking the remaining 60,000 of their company’s profits as dividends.

The Revenue had tried to claw back the thousands of pounds in tax and National Insurance they saved by charging Mrs Jones the same higher rate of tax as her husband.

But the court ruled in December that the Revenue could not do that and the judges refused the Revenue leave to appeal against their decision.

Sudden dilemma

However, now the Revenue has said it will petition the House of Lords directly to seek leave to appeal.

If it succeeds, and then wins the appeal, it could cost the Mr and Mrs Jones and thousands of couples in the same position thousands of pounds a year.

The best advice is to go by the Court of Appeal judgement John Whiting, PricewaterhouseCoopers

With the deadline for completing self-assessment tax returns just two weeks away, the Revenue’s move gives all such couples a dilemma.

Do they follow the law as now declared by the Court of Appeal or wait to see what happens with the House of Lords?

John Whiting of PricewaterhouseCoopers told BBC Radio 4’s Money Box programme that they should follow the recent court ruling.

“The best advice is to go by the Court of Appeal judgement. That is the law of the land.

“But make a note to that effect in the return and dare I say it, keep a bit of money aside, just in case the Revenue is finally successful.

“But it could be a little while before it is finally sorted.”

BBC Radio 4’s Money Box was broadcast on Saturday, 14 January, 2006, at 1204 GMT.

The programme will be repeated on Sunday, 15 January, 2006, at 2102 GMT

The government was adding to the costs of running a business through stealth taxes being introduced under the guise of anti-avoidance measures, it said.

In its to Chancellor Gordon Brown ahead of next week’s Budget it called for tax cuts.

In response, the Treasury said UK firms did not face high barriers to business.

Low investment

The CBI said that business was funding a disproportionate share of public spending.

It is hardly surprising that business investment has hit a record low John Cridland, CBI

The cumulative effect of post-1997 business tax rises was expected to hit 80bn by 2010, the business body warned.

“It is hardly surprising that business investment has hit a record low,” said CBI deputy director-general John Cridland.

“The problem for government is that lower investment by firms spells lower growth and , and eats into the very wealthy which public services depend on for funding over the long term.”

Stability

Business leaders called for a major business tax rate to be cut in Chancellor Brown’s Budget.

It suggested a lower tax rate or a reversal of the 2002 increase in National Insurance paid by employers.

In response to the CBI’s submission, the Treasury pointed out that since 1997 the government had cut corporation tax from 33% to 30%, to its lowest ever rate.

“International analysis, including by the OECD, now shows the UK to have the most stable economic framework with some of the lowest burdens on business and lowest barriers to enterprise anywhere in the world,” a Treasury spokesman said.

The police photo of Lin Liang Ren shows a bemused, , scruffy individual - looking every inch a crime victim rather than a .

But the truth about Lin is a tale of wealth, privilege and a good education - in stark contrast to the he abandoned to the Irish Sea.

He was brought up in Fuqing City in south east China’s Fujian province, his family owning a second house in the country.

His father, Lin Xien Hua, 57, and mother, Chen He Zhu, 52, ensured that Lin, his brother and sister - who now lives in Argentina - were well-educated.

He qualified as an accountant and became head of
finance at Fuqing’s Mo Chang Plastics Company - a firm that employed 900 people.

‘Someone of substance’

But Fujian is a hotbed of Chinese emigration to the West and Lin soon realised the this presented.

As Det Supt Mick Gradwell, who led the inquiry, put it: “He was someone of substance in China - the idea he came here in order to go out on the beach and pick cockles himself is far fetched.”

Zhao Xiao Qing was convicted of immigration offences

In 2000 he came to Britain and posed as a student to gain a visa.
He kept up this cover by paying 1,500 a time to enrol in college courses in London and Manchester.

Liverpool’s Chinatown gave him the manpower he need to start his business - and he set about forging cockling permits and providing fake National Insurance numbers.

But Lin would not be dirtying his own hands with manual labour. He told police: “I don’t like the cold and I don’t like the water.”

He would drive his workers to and from the sands - to and from the squalid overcrowded houses and flats he rented for them.

Meanwhile, he would return to the house he shared with his young girlfriend, Zhao Xiao Qing, or take his red Mitsubishi sports car into the city centre to visit casinos.

Yet after the tragedy, he tried to claim he was just an ordinary worker - while warning his tired, frightened charges of “serious consequences” for any who blew his cover.

“There is a level of uncaring arrogance about Lin Liang Ren - the thread that comes through all this is money,” Mr Gradwell said.

‘If a fake National number is used, can you flag it up and tell an employer?’, we asked.

‘I’m not telling you’, they said.

‘Is it a secret?’ we asked.

‘I’m not telling you that either’.

Do we need on this programme or ?

We DO know the Immigration Department has had to suspend contracts with its cleaning company after it was discovered to have been employing illegal immigrants. Those five have been arrested. But just how many more is the government employing without any idea it’s doing so?

We talk to illegal migrants and employers tell us it’s totally pointless to register workers legally because the system is in absolute chaos.

Also, tonight, the UN has told the United States that any foreign jails it runs - i.e. Guantanamo Bay - are illegal and should be shut down.

Funnily enough, judges tried to shut down Guantanamo almost fifteen years ago when it was being used to hold hundreds of Haitians captive in inhumane conditions as they tried to make their way into America. Were lessons learnt then? Clearly not.

Big Read-all-about-it

And, Mrs Pankhurst makes the front page. Her arrest - splashed on the Daily Mirror nearly a century ago - is chosen by Clare Short as the most memorable front page. So, plenty of women you wouldn’t mess with tonight, but in the friendliest sort of way.

Peter Black says the Lib Dem leader will have nobody to blame but himself if things go wrong.

Sir Menzies has admitted he faces a test of his authority over tax plans at the party’s conference in September.

Mr Black’s broadside comes after a poll suggested Lib Dem support had fallen to its lowest level since 2002.

The Guardian/ICM poll showed the Lib Dems down to 17%, with the on 39% and Labour 35%.

ICM interviewed a random sample of 1,001 adults by telephone last weekend.

Leadership control

In his blog, Mr Black says his party’s opinion poll ratings are stagnating and slipping back - despite Lib Dem successes at the Dunfermline and Bromley by-elections.

The Welsh AM was among those who earlier this year said Sir Menzies should face a contest to become leader, when it looked as if he was going to be elected unopposed.

In a blog entry headlined “Time for Ming to shape up”, he says people had a right to expect results after Sir Menzies replaced Charles Kennedy.

Peter Black says the tax plans are unfocussed

But he has “made little impact with the public at large”.

Mr Black complains that the party leadership has “established a lock on the party organisation irrespective of the party’s structures”.

“Ming is playing for very high stakes and in doing so has placed a great deal of his personal authority on the line,” he says.

“If things go wrong then there is nobody else to blame, he has made sure of that by the way he has gathered all the threads around him.”

Tax plans

Mr Black says the next few months will be critical as Sir Menzies tries to win support at the party’s conference for his tax plans.

The plans are expected to include “a long term ambition” of doubling allowances so no tax is paid until someone earns 10,000.

In the short term they will promise to scrap the 10p starting income tax rate, in effect raising the tax-free personal allowance from about 5,000 to 7,000.

They would also raise National Insurance starting thresholds to similar levels.

The basic rate of income tax will also be cut from 22p to 20p, with the threshold at which the top 40% rate of tax is paid raised from 33,000 to 50,000.

Conference test

Mr Black says the proposals announced so far are “worthy” but seem “unfocussed and lack a clear narrative”.

“The debate will, of course be critical but so too will Ming’s performance at the conference,” he says.

“We need to get some bounce in the polls out of that week in Brighton. When Simon Hughes said that Ming had until the end of the conference season to prove himself he was absolutely right.”

He adds: “It is now time for Ming Campbell to start delivering on his promises and the expectations of success that are associated with him.”

Lib Dem have yet to respond to Mr Black’s criticisms.

Sir Menzies recently brushed off a poll which suggested that twice as many people believed Mr Kennedy would be a better leader than him.

The 65-year-old told Newsnight he “would not be judged by opinion polls after a few months”.

“If I didn’t think I had the energy, the values and the judgement to be the leader of the Liberal Democrats, I most certainly wouldn’t have offered myself for the job,” he said.