Last week, The Sunday Telegraph made public an authoritative new research paper which showed that a seemingly innocuous tax change by Gordon Brown, a mere footnote to his 1997 budget, has cost UK pension funds more than 100 billion pounds.

Delivering his first budget, Mr Brown told the Commons that the abolition of "advance corporation tax relief" was a "long-needed reform". At the time, the move went almost unnoticed. Nobody, save for a handful of government and private-sector actuaries, understood the implications of what he had done. And given New Labour's awesome power at the time - fresh into office and with a huge parliamentary majority - few credible voices were raised in protest.

But, over the years, the impact of Mr Brown's "pension stealth tax" has become all too clear. By removing relief on share dividends, the Chancellor denied pension funds income to the tune of about 5 billion pounds a year. When you take into account the fact that those dividends are often re-invested, the true financial impact of this move soon escalates to eye-watering levels.
It is the power of such compounding that means that even our new estimate of the full impact - 100 billion pounds - may still be too low. Even so, it is more than twice as much as the combined pension deficits of this country's biggest 350 companies.

"I've said it before and I'll say it again: Gordon Brown mortgaged the futures of millions of workers in Britain almost as soon as he came into office.

The hypocrisy of all this allegedly socialist government has done in power in the area of pensions is palpable.

Self-provision (or private) pension schemes have been ruined by Brown's annual tax raid.

Employer schemes have been utterly bankrupted in the same way - so that today they are now closing to new entrants, being redrawn on far less favourable terms for existing members (who are in shock at their bleak future - having always thought they would be OK) - or even becoming insolvent at an unprecedented rate.

Meanwhile the government has not the spine to tackle Civil Service pensions - still gold plated and available at 60 - underwritten by the poor taxpayer."

At the same time they have the gall to flag up that the already pitiful state pension will soon not be available to workers until 68 or even 70.