Gift Aid, Aviva, Self-invested personal pensions

Available for over a year

When you give to charity do you tick the box that says please Gift Aid this donation? If you are a UK taxpayer George Osborne kindly adds 25% to the gift. So if you give £100 it is worth £125 to the charity. This scheme costs taxpayers more than £1 billion a year. But should we subsidise charities? One woman who thinks not is Lady Moyra Bannister, who wrote to the Times to say ''All Gift Aid should be scrapped. It is preposterous that taxpayers are subsidising charities, even those with apparent merit. '' Lady Bannister debates the issues with John Low, from the Charities Aid Foundation. An ex-employee of Aviva was sentenced last week in Manchester Crown Court for stealing data from his employer and selling it to a 'data broker'. It ended up with a claims management company, now out of business, and then two solicitors. Bob Howard tracks the path - and the value - of this stolen data and asks was there a weak link where it could have been stopped? The programme also hears from Andrew Morrish at Aviva. Some cash deposits held in Self-Invested Personal Pensions will be put in the same risk category as investments in foreign property and storage pods under new rules from the Financial Conduct Authority. That could mean that SIPP providers will be wary of cash deposits and may charge higher fees, pricing cautious investors out of using cash as a pension asset. Claire Trott, head of pensions technical at the SIPP provider Talbot and Muir and IFA Mark Meldon highlight the issues involved.