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Behind the scenes with Steve Webb: The inside story on his popular column When I first met the now editor of This is Money back in 2016 and offered to answer readers' questions on pensions, little did I realise that I would still be going eight years later...
As we reach my 400th weekly column, we thought it might be interesting for readers to have a 'behind the scenes' tour of how they are put together and to offer some tips on how to get your question answered. Every week, many dozens of readers from the UK and around the world get in touch with This is Money via the pensionquestions email address. Questions cover the whole range of topics from state pensions and benefits, company and private pensions, the rules around pension tax relief, financial advice, pension transfers and much more besides.
The team at This is Money go through all of the questions and remove all personal details so that when they are sent on to me I have no idea who has asked the question. I read through all the questions that come in and this gives me a great insight into what is on the mind of the public when it comes to pensions. Sometimes, This is Money readers have acted as a 'canary' in the mine, drawing our attention to emerging problems which no one else has spotted.
The classic example of this was a reader who contacted us in early 2020 about his wife's very low state pension. That column triggered dozens more questions and, after more columns and much campaigning, the Government ended up spending four years fixing the state pensions of over 100,000 people and paying..
. Steve Webb.
