Gordon Brown did not ‘raid' or ‘steal' British pension funds. What he did in 1997 was to remove tax credits on share dividends by abolishing relief on Advanced Corporation Tax (ACT). This "relief" meant that fund-managers could claim back the tax paid on dividends from companies in which their funds owned shares.
Share dividends are, quite simply, UNEARNED income and why on earth should that go tax free when we all have to pay tax on our EARNED income and just about everything ELSE? Surely, if anything, unearned income should be taxed at a higher rate than earned income rather than a lower one!
The only people who did any actual ‘WORK' to create these dividends were the Bolivian tin-miners, Ceylonese tea-leaf pickers or whoever else toiled for companies chosen as investments by these fund-managers.
Norman Lamont and his side-kick at the time, David Cameron, did much the same to pension funds as Brown did when they reduced ACT from 25% to 20% just four years earlier. It is perfectly obvious that their action reduced the income flowing into funds, too. Why don't we ever hear any whining about that?
Earlier, Thatcher's government had offered "pension holidays" to companies...ie they could opt out of making employer's contributions to their own pension funds, though their workers continued paying in. Guess how many companies did just that! As examples, the BBC paid in less than was required for 14 years, the Post Office paid zilch for over a decade and Unilever did likewise for seven years!
What happened to the money that was meant to go to future pensioners? It disappeared into the pockets of company directors and investors. Very few of them were short of a bob or two, I'd say.
The same government encouraged individuals to leave their occupational pension schemes and make private arrangements which would be far better for them. Yeah...right! So why did most of them return to their occupational fold?
The Labour Party has absolutely nothing to apologise for in the matter of pensions.