Smith, founder of Fundsmith, said the deputy prime minister had “apparently come up with a brilliant idea” to allow parents and grandparents to use part of their lump sum from their pension entitlement to pay the deposit on their children’s property purchases.
“The ‘idea’ of people who mostly already have inadequate pension provision using part of it to give their children a stake in what are almost certainly still over-priced houses in the UK beggars belief,” Smith said.
“It is yet another example of the obsession which UK politicians have with house prices.
“They seem not to have figured out that the problem would just be solved if house prices were allowed to decline. Then more young people could afford housing.”
Smith added that since people can already give the cash they take out of their pension tax free to whomever they chose, “I take it his actual ‘idea’ (I use the term loosely) is to give them some tax incentive to do so”.
