Pensioners losing out

As today's Times reveals, yet another Government computer bungle has meant that thousands of pensioners have been short-changed. Shortly before Christmas, Vince Cable revealed that thousands of public sector pensioners had been overpaid because part of their pension had been uprated twice - once by the company that administers their occupational pension and once as part of their state pension. But what was not revealed at the time was that thousands more had been underpaid because of other problems with getting information from one computer to another.

For the people who have been underpaid there has been no Commons statement, no announcement of plans to pay back the arrears - presumably with interest. I will be demanding an urgent response from the Government about when they knew about this and when they were planning to own up to this blunder.

One of the interesting side-issues that arises from all of this is that no-one receiving these pensions noticed either the over- or under-payments and they went on for decades. There could not be clearer evidence of the fact that the pension system is so fiendishly complicated even the people who are paid to administer it do not notice when things are going wrong. The sooner we have a radical simplification, with people getting a decent basic pension on which they can build their own pensions and savings, without the need for mass means-testing, the better.