But officials yesterday were unable to say whether an employee with funds in one “pooled” investment vehicle would be able to ask his employer to contribute to that, rather than that company’s existing one.The Treasury added that it was seeking suggestions for a more appropriate name than Lisa, as the vehicle has been dubbed so far, reflecting that they are designed for retirement.Duncan Mackechnie, chief executive at Direct Line, the telephone-based financial services group, said he backed the key thrust of yesterday’s proposals: “In broad terms it is to be welcomed especially its emphasis on adding value to most people’s pensions.”However, Angela Knight, chief executive at the Association of Private Client Investment Managers and Stockbrokers, said last night: “We are concerned that the Government has said nothing about direct equity investment in these proposals.”Outlook, page 18HOW TO DANCE THROUGH THE PENSIONS MAZEThe StatePensionType ofproductPays out at 65, up to a maximum of pounds 64.70 a week for a single person, pounds 103.40 for couples at present. They will provide the secure, flexible and value for money pensions that those on middle incomes lack under the current system,” Mr Darling said.Schemes will be regulated by the Financial Services Authority, the City watchdog. The way they look after pension-plan holders will be overseen by the Occupational Pensions Regulatory Authority.Investors will be able to move from scheme to scheme, check the value of their funds on a daily basis and even transfer them from employer to employer. It is really about an investment structure and we are rather mystified that many of the things they said would apply here already do with existing schemes.”While the vehicle was aimed at extending the flexibility available under the Government’s stakeholder proposals, published in December, it could also be used for occupational pension schemes and even personal pensions, it was claimed yesterday.A ceiling on charges for the new vehicle will be imposed and the Treasury has made clear it would like fees to be a modest annual percentage with no or low initial and exit fees.Alistair Darling, Secretary of State for Social Security, said the new mechanism would ensure the success of stakeholder pensions, which are designed to help middle-income earners save for retirement and avoid being dependent on welfare benefits.”Stakeholder pensions are a crucial part of our plans. It would be aimed at individuals who do not have occupational pension schemes or cannot afford the high fees often charged by personal pensions providers.”It is for the very large chunk of people for whom it would be useful to have a pension to move around with, who have modest earnings around or even below average incomes, who can put small amounts or lump sums away for their retirement,” one official said.Despite its stated aims, some pensions experts wondered whether the new vehicle offered anything not available by other means.Peter Tompkins, from the Institute of Actuaries pensions board, said: “I do not think there is a lot of beef there.

The proposal, which Treasury officials said could be combined with Labour’s earlier proposals for stakeholder pensions, will offer a “transparent” tax-free wrapper within which pooled investments can be held.
The new vehicle, which officials emphatically denied will be called a Lifelong Individual Savings Account, or Lisa, will allow savers to hold “suitable” funds currently sold by unit and investment trust groups. PLANS FOR a flexible pensions investment vehicle, aimed at encouraging greater savings for old age, were unveiled yesterday by the Government. Under PR, the left could win 10 per cent of the votes in some parts of the country and a new socialist party could win a small number of Commons seats.He said the Tories were already “two parties at war with one another” because of their “deep and unbridgeable” split over Europe.”The adoption of PR for Westminster would make it likelier than not that the breach in the Conservative Party would become formal and final, and that the battle that is now being fought inside the Conservative Party would be fought where it really should be – in the open, between two separate parties, with the electorate as judge,” he said.Although some Blairites advocate an eventual merger between Labour and the Liberal Democrats, Mr Ashdown insisted: “This is not my vision and never has been In fact my aim is the opposite … to help create a political environment where people can work together without having to be in the same party.”He said politicians should not offer the voters a choice between “this lot” and “that lot” but between a number of different approaches such as Thatcherism, Clarkeism, Blairism, socialism and liberal democracy.Despite growing criticism from Labour MPs of Mr Blair’s policy of forging closer links with Mr Ashdown and his party, Jack Cunningham, the Cabinet’s enforcer, met Alan Beith, the Liberal Democrat deputy leader, yesterday to discuss the working of the joint cabinet committee.Mr Ashdown accused Mr Blair yesterday of raiding pounds 100m from the National Health Service modernisation fund for the nurses’ pay rise announced this week, saying this contradicted the fund’s guidelines when it was set up last year.. Predicting that left-wingers would form a breakaway after PR was brought in, he said: “New Labour would be liberated and the left would have a voice again.

No more internal appeasement, no more loveless marriages.”The only thing holding Labour together was electoral expediency, said Mr Ashdown. LABOUR AND the Tories will each split into two parties but the Liberal Democrats will not merge with Labour, Paddy Ashdown predicted last night. He said the introduction of proportional representation for House of Commons elections would happen, even though his failure to persuade Tony Blair to call an early referendum on the issue is believed to have been one factor in his decision to stand down as Liberal Democrat leader this summer.
In a lecture in London, Mr Ashdown angered Labour MPs hostile to close links with his party by saying Labour was “irrevocably split” over its direction. We have had correspondence from hundreds of astronomers and there’s very little support for doing anything to Pluto.”An alternative to Mr Marsden’s radical idea, being considered by the IAU, would be to define Pluto as both a major and a minor planet.Either way, the IAU’s Executive Committee (Division III) will soon vote on the matter – though Dr Michael A’Hearn, its chair, insists that any decision “will not alter either the true nature of Pluto or the historical record of its having been generally considered a planet”.. We feel that there is little scientific or historical justification for such an action.”Donald Yeomans of the AAS said from his office at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory: “We’re hoping for a statement from the IAU soon, and we have recommended that the status quo be maintained.

Discovered in 1930, almost a century after Neptune, it is a minuscule, rocky body unlike the other outer planets, which are huge, gaseous giants.It has a highly elliptical orbit, which means that until later this year it lies inside Neptune’s orbit – making it a trans-Neptunian object (TNO).Furthermore, it orbits at an angle of 17 degrees compared with all the other planets.But the idea is not proving popular “There is … denigration of the idea that such things as Pluto could be put in the same category as asteroids,” Dr Marsden said.”Somebody said to me, `Why classify Pluto with the cosmic riff-raff?’ It’s unfortunate but some people are being extremely dogmatic.”Earlier this week the American Astronomical Society, one of the most powerful in the world, made the bald statement that “this action would undoubtedly be viewed by the broader scientific community and the general public as a `reclassification’ of Pluto from a major planet to a minor planet. Now he believes that Pluto should become No 10,000 and he may have science on his side.Pluto is quite unlike the other eight planets. A proposal by the astronomer Brian Marsden that the planet be renamed “Trans-Neptunian Object No 10,000″ has caused such a stellar row between astronomers worldwide that the IAU was forced to issue a statement, to quell “widespread public concern”.
Not since astronomers struggled with the preferred pronunciation of Uranus has the discipline been so divided.Dr Marsden, the head of the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has already identified 9,999 “trans-Neptunian objects”. HOW MANY astronomers does it take to change a planet? So many, apparently, that the International Astronomical Union – the science’s governing body – was forced to step into a row yesterday over the status of Pluto. For another, spouses can be big problems in their own right, especially if obliged to give up work and live in a country they may detest.The Hurran “outing” is unlikely to have been caused by nostalgia for the old days when Czech and British spooks were on opposite sides.