‘Chancellor’s list of urgent reforms for the next Budget’

Pensions — the elephant in the room

I could now turn to pensions, my specialty, especially tax relief, one of the biggest elephants in the room. If the government’s pensions review gets cracking and dusts down many of the excellent reports written over the years by the great and good in pensions who have explored every angle in copious depth, it should be able to report back in next to no time. I do not hold my breath.

There is also the prickly issue of raising the state pension age and its affordability. That has caused riots on French streets — could there be pensions riots here? Now there’s a thought.

Stephanie Hawthorne is a freelance journalist