Tom McPhail

Pensions expert, occupational scheme trustee, financial columnist

[Tom McPhail @PensionsMonkey]

Public sector productivity at its finest

[simon read @simonnread]

Number of the week: 183 - the total number of hours that convicted fraudster Kashim Chowdhury was contracted to work while holding down five different public sector jobs. That's 15 more hours than there are in seven days. https://t.co/tZUeVJdurn

[Rob Harris @RobHarris]

Ballon D'Or winner-elect Harry Kane coming on for England debut

[Tom McPhail @PensionsMonkey]

@TorstenBell

[Peter McCormack 🏴‍☠️🇬🇧🇮🇪 @PeterMcCormack]

Unfortunately Matthew will use 0.7% as spin without telling you the important details behind this.

Headline - it’s ugly.

Government consumption and investment was roughly 80% of the net increase:
- Government services: +£0.96bn
- Government investment: +£3.46bn
- Total GDP increase: £5.55bn

In the private sector computing grew 4.4%, but this is on the back of an AI and tech boom, in other words, it would have happened anyway.

Things that government policy directly impacts:
- Construction fell 0.7%
- Education fell 0.5%
- Food & beverage services fell 1.9%

Anyone with half a brain knows that GDP growth alone doesn’t prove higher productivity or better living standards.

We absolutely need sustained growth in the private sector and productivity.

We’re fucked if we rely on increased state spending. This is how countries destroy themselves.

But this is what socialists want, an entirely managed economy and dependent class.

[Tom McPhail @PensionsMonkey]

This is what socialism does

[Ben Hopkinson @Ben_A_Hopkinson]

Government imposed policy costs make up 57% of the clearing price of a new flat in London and 42% of a new home in the Home Counties.

Despite a big housing shortage and positive planning reforms, new home starts in England are declining from 182,000 in 2022 to under 125,000 last year.

While the macroeconomic context has worsened with build cost inflation and high interest rates, the Government is imposing more burdens on new homes, not fewer.

Taxes, levies, planning, and mandates add over £440,000 to the cost of delivering a home in London and nearly £225,000 nearby, with several of these imposed recently like the Second Staircase, Future Homes Standard, Building Safety Levy, Biodiversity Net Gain and Residential Property Developer Tax.

Individually these may be justified, but together they are making new homes unviable.

As a result, large developers are buying less land and small builders are going out of business; nearly 4,000 construction firms went bust just last year.

If we want to build more homes, we should be easing the burdens on them, not adding more.

Making housebuilding viable again is the most important issue in housing policy and my co-author, Edward Donovan, has completed excellent modelling showing how big the challenge is.

Read the full report: https://t.co/NWS58oqbTx

And simulate what changing the policies does with Edward's modelling here: https://t.co/IVrLBax2pz

[Guido Fawkes @GuidoFawkes]

WATCH: Energy Secretary Officially Ditches ‘Clean Power 2030’ Pledge https://t.co/4c85EHMmqp

[Simon French @Frencheconomics]

Some valid concerns raised on where this GDP growth is coming from. Government spending (G) and the public sector component of investment (I) up more than 20% in real terms since Q4 2019. The private sector counterparts up just over 3%. This is one of the reasons why this feels very different depending on which part of the UK economy you are exposed to.

[Mark Wallace @wallaceme]

Reminder: the green line (nearly flat) pays for the purple line (rising and rising), through taxes today and, via high borrowing, taxes tomorrow.

[Tom McPhail @PensionsMonkey]

Torsten Bell is coming for your pension freedoms.
Excellent from @Helen_Whately
https://t.co/mlH90cKU8N

[Helen Whately MP @Helen_Whately]

Meet Nikki. She’s a mum in her fifties who came to see me.

Since her job in a nursery became all too much, she’s started receiving universal credit.

Without qualifications and, as she put it, being ‘no good at computers’, she's struggling to find another job.

But that’s not why she came to speak to me. Her real worry was her son, Jack, who signed on the moment he turned 18.

He's got autism and ADHD, but Nikki wants him to work.

She's frustrated the state is paying him money to stay at home. She desperately wants the job centre to get on his case.

But there’s no sign of that.

So, Jack is literally left to his own devices, gaming in his bedroom most of the time.

Who would want that life for their child?

Stories like Jack's are increasingly common.

It’s a disaster.

Hundreds of thousands of young people are setting out on a life on benefits. Only the Conservatives have a detailed plan to put an end to this and help young people into work. We’ll halve National Insurance for employers hiring 21 to 24-year-olds, create 100,000 more apprenticeships, and introduce a Get to Work programme to stop young people going straight from education onto benefits.

[Tom McPhail @PensionsMonkey]

@David_J_Robbins That makes sense and is perhaps also illustrative of the problem as I see it; these plans look great at a general level but will fail when applied to (some) individuals.

[Tom McPhail @PensionsMonkey]

Torsten Bell's guided retirement plans are built on a flawed premise, that it makes sense to deliver default income solutions based on a single pension pot, rather than helping someone engage with the entirety of their financial and life circumstances..

https://t.co/Gvueag2LSh

[Tom McPhail @PensionsMonkey]

@David_J_Robbins Yes I do disagree, for the reasons you state in your second paragraph. The draft regulations set out a pathway whereby these outcomes will happen, by design.

[Tom McPhail @PensionsMonkey]

@David_J_Robbins I disagree, what is a pension scheme going to do if they are unable to obtain any relevant information about a member? Do the proposed rules allow the scheme to opt out of putting that member in a default income solution with locked in longevity protection?

[Tom McPhail @PensionsMonkey]

The problem is the obligation to impose that default doesn't go away just because a provider is unable to obtain relevant health information. Providers just have to push on anyway, pooling the sick and the healthy, the rich and the poor in a one-size fits all melting pot. Multiple defaults may help, but in lots of cases, the provider holds so little information about an individual's wider circumstances, that any default will be little better than a guess.

[Tom McPhail @PensionsMonkey]

@JoeDabrowski1 Some things you can’t polish 💩

[Tom McPhail @PensionsMonkey]

...instead they should be trying to roll back the suffocating regulatory burden that has accumulated around our pensions and financial services. Make it easier, simpler, cheaper for financial companies to serve their customers. This is state orchestrated misselling in the making

[Tom McPhail @PensionsMonkey]

...it assumes you can just put someone in an irreversible plan without even finding out about their health or explaining the death benefits implications. It is arrogant and irresponsible. It also means more regulation, more complexity, more costs, more state interference...

[Grok @grok]

The Energy Independence Bill, introduced 4 Nov 2026 by Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh.

It amends the Digital Economy Act 2017 to expand data-sharing gateways beyond fuel poverty. Official impact assessments list HMRC income and child benefit records among datasets that could be shared with licensed energy suppliers (and other sector bodies) to design and deliver targeted bill-support schemes. Access is not automatic: it requires secondary legislation for any specific scheme, is case-by-case, and retains existing data-protection safeguards.

[Tony Brown @agbdrilling]

Major UK power stations demolished in the last ~20 years (coal + oil):
Coal:
• Cockenzie (2015)
• Kingsnorth (~2014–18)
• Tilbury B (2016–19)
• Didcot A (2014–20)
• Ironbridge B (by 2021)
• Rugeley B (by 2021)
• Longannet (by 2021)
• Ferrybridge C (by 2022)
• Eggborough (by 2022)
• Cottam (2023–25)
Oil / primarily oil:
• Inverkip (closed 2006, demolished 2010–13)
• Grain oil station (closed 2012, demolished ~2014–16)
• Richborough (towers/chimney 2012)
• Littlebrook D (closed 2015, demolished 2019)
• Fawley (closed 2013, demolished 2019–23)
Several more (West Burton, Aberthaw, Fiddler’s Ferry, Ratcliffe) are still being demolished. Part of the broader fossil-fuel phase-out

Since 2006 China has built several hundred New Coal Power Stations

[Steve Loftus @LoftusSteve]

In a market already full of some of the dumbest government intervention you could possibly find this somehow beats them all combined.

What an absolutely terrible idea.