Champion of the Underdog

"Just like Saga, Money Box is a campaigning medium," he says. "I see my role as trying to ensure people are not conned, not overcharged, not treated unfairly. The BBC has to be even-handed but we will make it very clear if we think something is wrong and we'll fight to bring about change." 

It's a role for which the watchdog has been sharpening his teeth for a long time. More of a long-haired terrier than a growling Doberman, Paul Lewis has been biting the ankles of the financial establishment, civil service penpushers and various governments ever since he left university. Raised near Maidstone, Kent, the son of schoolteachers, he tried to change the world by joining his local newspaper. "The interviewer told me that, at 22, I was too old to be trained as a cub reporter," says Paul. "But I think the real reason was that I had even longer hair in those days and was a bit of a rebel." 

Instead, he went to work for charities, first Age Concern then the National Council For One Parent Families, then Youthaid, replacing newly-elected, MP Claire Short, who had founded the organisation to campaign on issues of youth unemployment, before becoming a journalist in 1986. 

"Whether representing kids or pensioners, my aim has always been the same," he says, "and that is, quite simply, to help people get their rights. You look at the welfare state and you think everyone must be getting exactly what they are entitled to. But they don't. There are billions of pounds that go unclaimed, largely because the rules are so very complicated. 

"For example, the Government says it wants every pensioner in the country to claim the income support to which they are entitled. Yet a billion pounds a year is unclaimed simply because it takes a vast 40-page form to get it. There is an understandable reluctance by people to try so hard to prove they're poor. There's a stigma attached to revealing all your financial details just to get a few pounds a week. 

"That is an ongoing campaign in Saga Magazine and one that we'll be running with in Money Box. But there have been many other campaigns in Saga which have resulted in successes - married women's pensions entitlements, for instance, and war pensioners' rent and council tax rebates. It's a mission without end, however. There are new scandals coming to light all the time. We've had mis-selling of endowments, pensions and now additional voluntary contributions." 

What's next? "I think a lot of people will find stakeholder pensions very confusing. There's going to be a lot of scope for companies to sell people products that aren't appropriate for them under the branding of stakeholder pensions." 

By his constant campaigning, Paul has made a difference to other people's lives. Taking over as presenter of Money Box will make a difference to his own. The new job means that from now on he no longer has to set his alarm for 3am every weekday to drive the short distance from his west London home to BBC TV Centre in time to prepare his Wake Up To Money slots on Radio 5 Live's breakfast show. Now he'll be able to see more of his partner Angela, a freelance charity fundraiser. 

"I had to be in bed by 8pm," he says. "It meant I was slightly out of step with the rest of the world. Friends would ask me about a particular TV programme and I'd have to tell them, 'I go to bed before anything grown-up comes on!" 

The routine gave Paul plenty of quiet daytime hours to pursue his passion, collecting antiquarian Victorian novels. The walls of his sitting room are lined with leather-bound first editions. His favourite author is Charles Dickens's friend and contemporary, Wilkie Collins. The sentient prose of the 19th century is a far cry from the sound bite world of 21st-century radio but Paul's love of language leads us to his greatest gripe. 

He says: "I long ago declared war on the dreadful jargon that surrounds money, whether from the Government or the insurance industry. It is very confusing - and you can't avoid the conclusion that it's intentional. In the case of the Government, it's often to make you not take things that are rightfully yours, and that saves the Treasury billions of pounds a year. In the case of companies, they want you not to be able to make a rational choice, because if you did you'd only ever buy the best and the cheapest. There is an entire industry out there which is trying to sell you products which may well be no good to you. That's why it's so important for journalists to explain away the jargon in a way that people can understand. Financial journalism, unlike some other areas of our profession, is a section that people actually trust. They trust Saga and they trust Money Box because both offer carefully researched advice on how to save and to spend money." 

Money Box, says Paul, has for 23 years been a "trusted guide" through the financial maze under his predecessors Vincent Duggleby, Louise Boning and Alison Mitchell. Being Radio 4, a large proportion of Paul's audience will already know him through his column in this magazine. Part of his message will be familiar - that there is a new power in the land that is at last being recognised. "The older generations have more power now than they have ever enjoyed," says Paul. "The reasons are their financial clout and, because of their sheer voting numbers, their political clout. The over-50s will be a majority in 20 or 30 years time but already politicians, retailers and financial institutions are taking them very seriously, probably for the first time. 

"Older people are no longer written off. They are an economic and political force such as we have not seen in this country before. One reason for this is that the so-called 'Children of the Sixties', like me, have always demanded to be taken seriously. They are not going to allow themselves to be treated as charity cases or victims, as might have happened in the past. 

"They overcharge them at the bank and make the structure of charges so complicated that people don't realise their money is disappearing. When that happens with my generation, companies tend to end up with some very stroppy customers. But they are not used to having such articulate, powerful people complaining to them." 

So what is watchdog Lewis's byword for securing your rights? Be stroppy? "Nothing wrong with stroppy," he says. "Stroppy gets you your own way. Just being grumpy, like Victor Meldrew, isn't too smart. But stroppiness, as long as it is a focused, intelligent, rational stroppiness, can win you what you want. Yes, stroppy is good."

Paul Lewis presents the new series of Money Box, starting on September 2 on BBC Radio 4. He will continue to write his popular Your Rights column for Saga Magazine.

Photographs © Mike Lawn. Text © Nigel Blundell.

e-mail Paul Lewis on paul@paullewis.co.uk