Blair Government Reform In Pension System: Embodying Fairness And Efficiency

Since 1908 Old Age Pension Act was introduced, the historical development of the UK pension system has been nearly 100 years. Both its historical origin and its system design which was mature in the reform and the development, once caused the UK pension system to be considered one of the most perfect pension systems in the world. Its historical evolution process, resting on the different assurance of the relationship between fairness and efficiency, may be approximately divided into three phases: Before 1980s,"pursued fairness, neglected efficiency"; between 1980s and 1997,"emphasized efficiency, ignored fairness"; 1997 - 2007,"fairness and efficiency coordinately developed".This article analyses Blair government reform in pension system and concentrates on pension system design in which the relation between fairness and efficiency has been balanced, assured, coordinated.About fairness, the paper mainly analyses the improvement measurements to old age poverty in British pension system:â‘ Stakeholder Pension is a low-cost personal pension scheme with charges capped at 1% of the fund value, in order that this scheme can encourage the low earners to join in and further broaden the coverage.â‘¡State Second Pension, the new scheme provides for low and moderate earners and those who are unable to remain in work due to caring responsibilities, illness or disability. In the level of benefit, paying form and so on, it embodies the policy incline to the low earners.â‘¢Both Minimum Income Guarantee and Pension Credit are income support to those whose income and saving is below minimum limit.â‘£Preventing, attacking the cheating behavior. All these measures, have alleviated the old age poverty, reduced unfairness and instability occurrence, and embodied the fairness character of Blair government reforms in pension system.About efficiency, the paper mainly analyses Blair government has promoted private pension market development in order to relieve state financial burden:â‘ Preventing and attacking the cheating behavior, has strengthened the pension system's own efficiency.â‘¡In order to encourage more low earners to join personal pension , Blair government has introduced Stakeholder Pension which limits the highest charge. This system has broadened the coverage of pension system and relieved state financial burden.â‘¢Blair government has established Pension Protection Fund, the Pension Regulator, simplified the pensions tax regime, caused people to have confidence in private pension and regulated the private pension market development. All these measures have made the pension system play a full part in reducing the national expenditure pressure, promoting economic operating efficiency, finally strengthening the international competition power remarkably, and embodying Blair government's original intention of considering economic efficiency in reforming the pension system.Although the present pension system faces crises, although people have different idea to the Blair government reforms, its reform idea of emphasizing the coordination of fairness and efficiency is worth esteeming, its reform direction represents pension system reform universal tendency. Pension system inevitably has to exist, pension system has to carry on the reform. Therefore, it's important and essential for our country to learn experience and lessons from Blair government reforms in pension system.There are three parts in this thesis:The first part presents the relation between British pension system and fairness and efficiency. The important content is the detailed description to the three-pillared pension system at present stage. As fairness and efficiency are two value goals in the system, the paper is based on dialectical relational analysis of fairness and efficiency. In this part, from the general to the concrete pension system's fairness and efficiency, the paper induces dialectical relational analysis of fairness and efficiency. After this analysis, the paper describes different choice to fairness and efficiency during different stages.The second part describes Blair government reforms in pension system. The paper firstly introduces pension system reform's internal reason and the development environmental change, presenting its reform background. Reform measures are the core contents in entire paper, including State Second Pension, private pension saving, Minimum Income Guarantee, Pension Credit, preventing and attacking the cheating behavior. In this part, it makes assessment to the reform and points out its defects. Its experience is worth studying, its lessons similarly are also worth absorbing.The third part shows what we can learn from the Blair government reforms in pension system. This part briefly introduces achievements and describes the corrosion to fairness and efficiency. Being based on the actuality of pension system in our country, this article summarizes the inspiration drawn from UK pension system and introduces some concrete measures, such as broadening the coverage of pension system, establishing the multi-pillared pension system, introducing old age income support, attacking the cheating behavior and so on.