Dear Listener

Technically last week was our last regular Money Box of the season – we are back on 1 September. This week’s programme is technically a special Money Box and we are concentrating on pensions. See below.

So I’ll confine my preamble to a correction or rather a clarification of my short paragraph last week about changes planned in Bereavement Benefits. I don’t think what I wrote was wrong. But someone who should know – Jo Warlow the Director of the National Association of Widows, thinks it was. And to my defence that I took the changes from the Government’s own briefing her reply was that is also misleading.

I wrote “Instead of a weekly allowance that can last up to 20 years there will be a lump sum payment made shortly after the death to reflect the extra costs that bereavement brings to a spouse or civil partner.”

In fact there is almost no chance of a widow(er) getting a weekly allowance of 20 years under the present regime. The allowance for those without dependent children is only for a maximum of one year – and they have to be 45 and under pension age when bereaved to get it. The allowance for those with children lasts as long as child benefit lasts for the youngest child of the deceased. Now if the widow was just pregnant when her husband or civil partner died and that child stayed in education until they reached 19 it could in theory last almost 20 years. But it is a very unlikely scenario. And impossible if the bereaved was a man. None of that changes the fact that the new scheme would scrap all weekly allowances rolling them up into a lump-sum payment – albeit paid over 12 months. Nor does it change a fact which I cut out last week for reasons of length that the new regime will, in the long run, cost less per year than the present one. Hope I’ve got it right this time!

Details here www.dwp.gov.uk/consultations/2011/bereavement-benefit.shtml

***IN MONEY BOX THIS WEEK***

Our pensions special begins with a warning from the Serious Fraud Office that it is investigating up to nine schemes totalling ‘hundreds of millions of pounds’ which have conned thousands of people out of their pensions. The SFO has just announced that one man has been jailed for eight years after a scam which took £52 million off 2,200 people. We explain how the scam works and how to protect yourself.

We host the live Big Debate. In the red corner David Pitt Watson whose report this week accused the pensions industry of hiding the true cost of pension schemes and claims that a pension with no fees would be 60 per cent higher than one with fees. And in the blue corner Otto Thoresen Director General of the Association of British Insurers who will say the report exaggerates charges and misrepresents their current cost.

Then Pensions Minister Steve Webb joins in live from his constituency in Bristol telling us his views on pension charges and what he plans to do about small pension pots.

Finally we steer away from pensions to squeeze in the week’s top news – Cooperative Bank agrees to buy 632 branches, 4.8 million customers and their current, savings, and mortgage accounts from Lloyds Banking Group. It will also get the TSB brand, six customer contact centres and Lloyds IT expertise as well as all the relevant staff. But what does it mean for those customers? And will it shake up the High Street banking system when Co-op becomes the sixth biggest branch network and on some measures the biggest mutual offering banking services?

That will easily fill our 24 minutes on Saturday at noon. But this week we get an extra four minutes – not for the regular Saturday slot. But for the repeat. Because we are now in our summer dress, we don’t get the Sunday repeat. Instead the Saturday show is repeated in the Money Box Live spot on Wednesday at three (It is on holiday too). But that slot is 28 minutes long – so we need a bit more material. Wait and see what the unrepeated repeat material might be. Or catch up anytime online at www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/moneybox. Remember you can put in a regular order for our podcast. More than 200,000 listen that way each week. It is free.

There is more information on our website www.bbc.co.uk/moneybox where you can also download transcripts of past programmes and send us ideas or problems you want us to look into.

This newsletter is available at bbc.co.uk/moneybox/newsletter around the time it hits your inbox - tell your friends who do not subscribe. And you could join the more than 37,300 people who now follow me on Twitter to enjoy, or rant about, my random but timely thoughts on money and a few other things whenever I am awake at www.twitter.com/paullewismoney.

Next week Ruth Alexander presents a Money Box special on finance and young people. After that we have four programmes called Fixing Broken Banks. What’s gone wrong with British banking? Can it be repaired? Michael Robinson reveals some surprising answers.

I look forward to sitting at home listening along with all of you for the next five Saturdays! I am back with Money Box on 1 September and Money Box Live returns on 5 September.

Best wishes,

Paul

PS I am on Breakfast on BBC One on Saturday probably around 0845 trailing one of the items from Money Box. And hopefully on Breakfast again on Thursday morning usually at 0640 and 0820 but times, and even the day, can change. And back on Breakfast on Thursdays after the Olympics.

e-mail Paul Lewis