Cutting corporation tax, pension fears and uninsured drivers

The Chancellor has floated a plan to cut corporation tax to encourage businesses to continue investing in the UK following the Brexit vote. In an interview with the Financial Times, George Osborne said he would reduce the rate to below 15 per cent. The current rate is 20 per cent rate. A new low rate would give the UK the lowest corporation tax of any major economy. ‘We must focus on the horizon and the journey ahead and make the most of the hand we’ve been dealt,’ Osborne told the FT. But former World Trade Organization chief Pascal Lamy said the Chancellor had to consider what the European Union would think. He told the BBC the plan would be seen as, in effect, the start of Brexit negotiations, and starting with tax was not the right way to go about it. Pensions

Pensions Minister Ros Altmann says there is a ‘delicate balancing act’ to maintain the strength of pension schemes amid the uncertainty of Brexit, according to the BBC.

Some companies are under pressure to keep the deficits of their final salary pension schemes under control. But Baroness Altmann said companies should not be forced to spend too much plugging these deficits at a time when the economy needed boosting. In other pensions news, the Pension Regulator should be given new powers to block company deals so that employees and pensioners are better protected in the wake of events such as the collapse of BHS, the former chair of the Pension Protection Fund has said. Lady Judge, who stepped down last month, said the regulator was not equipped to deal with situations such as that at BHS, sold by Sir Philip Green to Dominic Chappell for £1 last year and now left with an estimated £571 million pensions black hole. Motor insurance One in eight cars on the roads in east London do not have insurance, according to analysis which names the capital as the worst place in Britain for uninsured drivers. About 216,000 of the capital’s 3.9 million cars do not have insurance, with north and south east London also featuring in the list of uninsured hotspots, research by the insurer Churchill found. The Guardian reports that drivers involved in an accident in these areas face a significant risk of finding the other driver has no legal or financial protection. But just one in 71 Scots drive without insurance and only one in 73 in the south west of England. Across the UK there are estimated to be more than a million uninsured motorists. Fines for bad behaviour The Guardian also reports that fines imposed by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in the first half of 2016 have fallen to £7.2 million – less than 1 per cent of the figure of a year before. The plunge in fines from £819 million in the same period last year follows a period of turbulence for the FCA and coincides with the arrival of Andrew Bailey from the Bank of England as the watchdog’s chief executive. The number of fines has also fallen, almost halving to 13 from 24 in the first half of last year. Eight of the fines, totalling £3.2 million, resulted from an investigation into the failure of insurance schemes for law firms. Two companies and six people were fined. Rent-to-own

Rent-to-own companies are selling products to vulnerable people with mental health problems and learning disabilities, according to a new investigation.The firms allow customers to pay for a household item in instalments, with high interest rates, until they own it.

Citizens Advice worries that vulnerable people are being ‘pushed into further financial difficulty’. BrightHouse – the biggest company – denies exploiting consumers in vulnerable circumstances.