Examination of Witnesses (Questions 163-179)
MR ADAIR
TURNER, MS
JEANNIE DRAKE
AND PROFESSOR
JOHN HILLS
24 NOVEMBER 2004
Q163 Chairman: Ladies and gentlemen,
good morning and welcome. The Committee is engaged in a Pension
Credit inquiry and we thought it would be essential to talk to
the Pensions Commission, who have recently produced their rather
excellent compendium of background information and scene-setting
in terms of the wider work the Government has asked them to do.
We are delighted that all three commissioners were willing to
come in front of us this morning. We have in front of us Adair
Turner, who of course is the Chair of the Pensions Commission;
Jeannie Drake, who is the Deputy General Secretary of the Communication
Workers Union; and John Hills, Professor of Social Policy at LSE.
You are very welcome. Thank you very much for coming and for your
written evidence. You are dealing with a level of technical detail
which we do not need to get engaged with to the same extent in
this particular inquiry on Pensions Credit, but it would be foolish
for us, if we were trying to make positive recommendations to
try to get the policy better configured for both the short term
and the longer term, to ignore the work you are doing. We have
the opportunity in the reasonably short-distance future to make
suggestions to government as to how to reconfigure Pension Credit.
There has been a little bit of discussion: the new Secretary of
State is saying some interesting things about the longer term
and Malcolm Wicks has been saying that Pension Credit is not forever,
which, in one sense is a statement which is blindingly obvious
and everyone understands that; but, on the other hand, it is quite
interesting that they are thinking how the policy might be refined
in the immediate future. It would be very helpful if you could
just set the scene a little and say a little bit about your working
timetable, what you expect to try to achieve, and then we will
go into some questions with a slightly narrower focus to help
us with our work on Pension Credit.
Mr Turner: Chairman, we are very
glad to have this opportunity to talk to you. Perhaps I could
begin by telling you where we are in the work of the Pensions
Commission. As you know, we produced our first report four or
five weeks ago now. In that report we aimed to provide a very
detailed and, we hope, comprehensive description of the situation
as regards pension provision in the UK. We covered both the plans
which the state has to outline to provide pensions and the extent
to which the private sector is filling in the gaps left by the
state. It describes, as you know, the basic demographics; it describes
the trends in private pension provision as well as the state plans;
and it ends by setting out a logical set of ways forward which
could be debated, which include but are not limited to the specific
thing which was put on our terms of reference: whether we should
ever move beyond the voluntary system (ie, have some element of
compulsion). But you cannot answer that question without also
considering whether the structure of the state system is well
designed to encourage voluntary savings, without considering whether
the voluntary savings system could be made more effective in a
number of ways. That report has been published and we now have
a form of consultation process which asks for written consultations
between now and the end of January. We are encouraging all the
relevant expert groups and bodies to give us a reaction to the
report, which establishes whether everybody is agreed on the facts
that we have set out there. We have asked people to be clear whether
there are any disagreements about the description of the situation
that we set out but also to propose as between the different options
that we set out which the different bodies recommend. We will
be taking the input of those written submissions—and, indeed,
some oral sessions subsequently—and further research and
thinking that we will do, and we intend by sometime about October
next year to come out with our recommendations on what the way
forward should be for our overall pension system. Within that
overall context, the issue of the Pension Credit is mentioned
and discussed in one of the chapters of our report, chapter 6
in particular, from which the written evidence that we have given
you is largely taken. It is in a section where we talk about barriers
to the success of a voluntarist solution. We did not position
it there as the only barrier, nor, indeed, the knock-out barrier,
but as one among a set of things that can make it difficult to
have effective increase in voluntary savings. These include fundamental
behavioural barriers, complexity, lack of trust, the high cost
of distribution, but also within that we did flag that means testing,
if it grew over time—as it would grow if we continued indefinitely
the present indexation arrangements—could be a problem of
a disincentive to save for some people. We also flagged up, however,
as is in our written evidence, just how very complicated the set
of incentives to save are, given the fact that there is a very
complicated interface between the taxation system, the Working
Tax Credit system and the means-testing system. We positioned
our point of view of the Pension Credit as understanding the reasons
why the Government had introduced it, as a response to pensioner
poverty—and, in a sense, the only way to do a short-term
response to pensioner poverty within constrained public expenditure—but
we flagged up that it could be, if it grew over time with indexation,
a problem of bringing a larger number of people into the withdrawal
impact on incentives. That is where we positioned the discussion
of the Pension Credit within the overall view of the pension system.
Q164 Chairman: That is very helpful.
Could I ask one question before we go into some of the technical,
detailed matters? If in the course of your work you found that
the evidence and the results of the consultation in which you
have engaged indicated it, do you think you would have the ability
to stretch the slightly narrow focus of your original terms of
reference? Obviously I do not think anybody is expecting you to
go round the horizons into prospective territory looking for things
to do—I am sure you are not doing that, you have enough
on your plate as it is—but, given what some of us felt was
an important but slightly narrow remit, would the three of you,
as commissioners, if you felt the evidence drove you to think
about other things, have the confidence to be able to make recommendations
on a slightly wider plane?
Mr Turner: We feel we were asked
to recommend in particular on the adequacy of private pension
saving, but you cannot answer the question of the adequacy of
private pension saving without clearly setting out what it is
that the state is providing as the base load to people. That is
why we have discussion in our report of the state intentions.
In discussing whether or not a voluntary system will work or whether
a compulsory system is required or would work, you cannot ignore
the implications of the way that the state system is designed
for the incentives for private savings, either direct rational
savings or the indirect impact of complexity. That was clearly
set out in the work programme for the first stage of our report,
which was set out in May or June 2003, which made it plain that
we would consider the implications of the design of the state
system for incentives to save as well as for how much people could
rely on from the state in any case, and therefore the implication
in our report is that, in our recommendations, if those features
of the state system are relevant to the likely success of private
savings, we must and we will comment on them.
Chairman: That is very helpful. Thank
you.
Q165 Mr Waterson: I would like to focus
a bit more on disincentives and complexity. First of all disincentives.
You have made the point—and you make it, I think, very clearly—in
your interim report that means-testing does create disincentives,
particularly for low-income savers. Could you expand a bit more
on what you have found so far on this issue of disincentives.
Mr Turner: In our report we do
quite a lot on the rational incentives to save; ie, what happens
to someone's post-tax, post-means-testing return relative to the
return they would get in an environment where there was no tax
or no means-testing. We illustrate that there are some categories
of people for whom the incentives to save are reduced by the impact
of means-testing. We also illustrate that there are some groups
of people who actually have rather good incentives to save, even
at low income levels, because of the interface of the Working
Tax Credit system and the means-tested credit system. For example,
if someone is on Working Tax Credit during their working life
and means-tested Pension Credit during retirement, they can actually
have a quite good rational incentive to save, but there are certainly
some people whose rational incentives to save are reduced by the
impact of means-tested withdrawal. I think one has to accept that
is almost inevitable in any pension or welfare system. We have
the fundamental problem that means-testing is the bad side of
targeting which tends to be a good thing; that is, if you have
constrained public expenditure and you want to deal with low income
levels, you target, and everybody agrees targeting is good, and
the flip side of targeting is means-testing and it inevitably
has problems for disincentives, either for working or for saving.
That problem is inherent in any welfare system and has been inherent
within our welfare system for many years. The fact that there
are some groups of people who have rational disincentives to save
cannot, I think, be seen as an overall criticism of the principle
of Pension Credit and I think it is difficult to imagine a system
which does not have some element of that occurring. But the concern
that we flag up is that, if we were to continue indefinitely the
current combination of the Basic State Pension indexed to prices
while the pivot points of the Pension Credit were indexed to average
earnings, then it follows as a simple mathematical fact that,
rather than a small number of relatively low income people being
in this means-tested environment, a wider and wider share of the
population is going to be in it. The second question to raise
is: Are those rational disincentives to save (ie, our charts which
show what happens to the rate of return) stopping people saving?
There is an argument that says, "Given that it is so difficult
to understand, how could it be a disincentive to save". I
think we are wary of that as a principle of public policy, that
we should rely on lack of understanding in order to have good
incentives to save. The other thing to be said is that in this
disincentives to save, the point of view of the distribution channels
and of the independent financial advisors and of the sales forces
of the insurance companies and banks is actually as important
as the point of view of the individual, because the vast majority
of pension products, certainly, or group personal pensions are
sold not bought. People do not go out and say, "I'm going
to buy a pension product." Somebody goes and persuades them.
If those people who are to persuade them believe there is a danger
that there is a group of people to whom it would not be good value
to sell a pension product because of means-testing, they will
not sell it, and in some cases they will not sell it because they
are worried that in 10 or 15 years time, if they do, they will
be accused of mis-selling a product. Whereas it is difficult to
put one's hand on one's heart and say, "Look, we have clear
survey evidence that proves that there are lots of individuals
who know the impacts of means-testing and are disincentivised
from selling through that, it is clear from discussion with the
independent financial advisor industry—and if you simply
read their press and look at what they say in that industry—that
they believe the future spread of the coverage of Pension Credit
should be a disincentive to save, and that of itself is or could
be a major influence on the market. We have not, let me stress,
conducted survey evidence which gets to how aware people are of
the impact of means testing withdrawal on Pension Credit, how
important is it to their pension saving decision—we will
be conducting some of that sort of survey evidence and focus groups
during the course of the next year—but the thing which is,
as I say, much clearer than the knowledge of individuals, is the
knowledge of the independent financial advisers.
Professor Hills: I think one has
to make this distinction between the rational incentives, that
if you sit with a wet towel around your head for several months
you can end up mapping, people's beliefs about the system. If
the climate of opinion out there is that there is this thing on
the horizon which is going to affect two-thirds of the population
in 30 years time and therefore people are saying, "It's not
worth saving in a pension," we have a problem, particularly
if the rational incentives are for most people very positive,
as, indeed, they are through the system of tax relief and National
Insurance contribution relief. So we almost end up with the worst
of both worlds: we are putting money into the system to incentivise
pension savings but people do not realise that those strong incentives
are there. It is the climate of belief which can be as important
as what is underlying it.
Q166 Mr Waterson: Would it be fair to
summarise your evidence by saying that, at the moment, your gut
instinct is that the complexity, as well as the effect on take-up—which
is a quite different issue—is actually leading people to
under-provide for their retirement, so you would not be surprised
if the evidence you obtained would come to that same conclusion.
Mr Turner: We would not be surprised
if complexity in itself was a problem. It might be worth just
picking up on this complexity point. We asserted in Chapter 6
that we have one of the most complex pension systems in the world
and that that in itself is a barrier to rational savings. We did
not base that at that time—although we will now be conducting
the research—on survey evidence of people's responses, but
we did cite a number of things which tend to support that assertion.
We know, for instance, that people have a relatively poor understanding
of what they personally can expect to receive from the state when
they retire in, say, 20 or 30 years time, so they do not have
a good base load of what they are going to get from the state
on which rationally to think about how much they should save for
themselves (exhibit 6.5 in the report). We also know that people
have a pretty poor understanding of what tax relief they receive
on pension saving. When you ask a higher rate tax payer how much
tax relief they are getting, only 28 correctly say 40%. When you
ask a basic tax rate payer how much tax relief they think they
are getting, only 17% of those correctly give the answer of 22%.
When you ask people whether they think they have good knowledge
of pensions and whether they think this is an area they are well
equipped to navigate, a significantly large number, 53%, say their
knowledge is either very patchy or they know little or nothing
about it. That figure of 53% now was 46% in 2,000, and, if anything,
the trend of people who have poor knowledge seems to be increasing.
When you ask people who do they trust, we end up with significant
levels of distrust of the Government and of the financial services
industry, which, again, seems partly to reflect the sheer complexity
of it. When you add that with the findings of behavioural economics
which very clearly illustrate that people shy away from complexity
and difficult decisions, although we do not have clear survey
evidence that says "X% of people say they find this complex
and therefore do not save," I think there is a very strong
basis of evidence to infer that it is highly likely that complexity
in itself is tending to make people shy away from savings decisions.
Complexity itself also increases the cost of delivery of product
in particular to low income/low premium people. We have gone through
a process with the Sandler Product Review of trying to see whether
we can design pension and other products and selling processes—the
so-called light touch sales approach—which are sufficiently
straightforward that one can have a tight price cap and still
have the industry find it profitable to sell to people. The resolution
of that has been that the Treasury ended up agreeing that 1% was
too tight and 1.5% was required. That in itself reflects the sheer
complexity of the products, which therefore increases the size
of the interview process which is required to sell these products,
which is the direct and primary driver of the cost of selling
these products.
Ms Drake: May I add, going back
to the Pension Credit point, just taking the issue of the Savings
Credit threshold, the way that it is set in relation to the Basic
State Pension impacts greatest on those with less than the full
entitlement to the Basic State Pension. Those with a less than
full entitlement to the Basic State Pension will suffer the 100%
withdrawal rate on their savings, which, as we know, for women
can be a particular problem.
Q167 Mr Waterson: To be clear, you are
going to return to this issue in your final report.
Mr Turner: We will certainly try
to be a bit more specific about it. It is very difficult to be
highly specific about it, but certainly when you talk to the IFA
industry you will now get a significant number of people who will
tell you anecdotally, "We're going to keep away from that
market because we are just not convinced that it is good advice
to advise people on low incomes to take out personal pensions,
given the means-tested effect." We are in the process of
designing our work programme for the next year and we will have
to decide whether we will do a survey of IFAs as part of that
in order to see how important that effect is. But certainly if
you talk to the IFA industry it is something which is significantly
put forward, and that in itself can have an important effect.
Q168 Mr Waterson: Do you think there
are any short-term design changes which can be made to tweak the
structure of Pension Credit to help simplify this problem in the
short-term?
Mr Turner: We have not got into
the detail of that. As I have stressed, our biggest concern is
not so much what is going on at the moment and the immediate impact
of it, as the impact which would grow over time if the current
indexation arrangements continued over a long period of time.
As we head toward recommendations, we will obviously think about
both end points and proposals on transitions, but we really have
not got into the detail of whether there are short-term tweaks
that can alleviate these problems and our focus has very much
been on the long-term impact of the different indexations.
Q169 Mr Waterson: Your report recommends
policies that would make it easier for those who wish to work
beyond the State Pension Age. Do you think that should include
an increase in the earnings disregard for Pension Credit?
Mr Turner: Again, that is not
a specific issue we have looked at. There is obviously a classic
trade-off there. I think it might have to be a significant increase
to make a difference to the incentives to save and there may be
other more powerful things, but, again, it is not something we
have looked at in detail, so I think we probably like to avoid
getting into those detailed levels at this time.
Q170 Mr Waterson: Finally, if I may,
there is a feeling in some quarters that the next election campaign
would be better informed if we had your final conclusions before
rather than afterwards. Do you have any comment to make on that?
Mr Turner: All I can say is that
we as a commission can only work at a pace which is do-able. We
could not have produced this report, which tries to provide a
detailed and comprehensive description of the situation, earlier
than we did. It took a great deal of work. It included discovering
some fundamental facts; for instance, about total levels of pension
contributions which were wrong in the Office of National Statistics
which we had to get right. It is not that we are sitting here
with, as it were, the recommendations in our back pocket but not
saying them: it has taken us until this time to get to here and
we do believe it is more important to get our recommendations
right than to get them early. One of the things that has gone
wrong in British pension policy in the past is the unintended
consequence of individual aspects of policy which appear to make
sense looked at in themselves but the cumulative effect of which
did not make sense. I think it is for politicians to decide exactly
what level of commentary before the election is appropriate. We
have been asked to do a job, which we are doing at what we think
is the fastest possible pace to do a really professional and good
job.
Ms Drake: We have said quite clearly
that we are very keen to build the broadest possible consensus
on the analysis of the problem and, hopefully, the way forward.
That takes time. Obviously we have produced our initial findings,
but we have also invited people to comment on whether they agree
or disagree with those findings as well. As part of consensus
building you have to allow people time to make their comment.
Chairman: There are two supplementary
questions picking up on the current impact short term.
Q171 Ms Buck: I want to go back to the
research that you carried out on people's understanding of the
value, for example, of tax relief. Forgive me, I do not remember
whether you did this or not, but did you establish whether there
was any public awareness or understanding of the impact and the
effect on incentives of the public expenditure implications of
raising the Basic State Pension to the point where a means-tested
Tax Credit would not be required.
Mr Turner: The answer to that
is no. Are you saying that if we were to raise the Basic State
Pension to the level where means-testing would not be required,
that in itself would require a higher level of taxation and that
level of taxation would in itself be a disincentive effect? Is
that the argument?
Q172 Ms Buck: Yes.
Mr Turner: The answer is that
neither we nor, as far as I know, anybody else, has conducted
survey information that gets to that level of complexity. I have
to say I think it would be an extraordinarily difficult question
to ask in a public opinion survey. We are in the process now of
discussing with professional surveyors the questions that we want
to ask on knowledge, expectations, attitudes, preferences,
and I know that what is going to happen is we are going to have
to come down from our wish list of all the questions we would
like to ask to what the professionals advise us is actually do-able.
But, you are quite right, there is no free lunch here. In order
to get round the problem of means testing, in order to have a
higher, less means-tested Basic State Pension, there are really
only two ways to proceed. You either have to accept a higher level
of taxation or you have to accept a higher State Pension Age.
Those are the only two ways where you can cut through and get
to something which, if it were costless, would be very attractive,
which is a higher, less means-tested Basic State Pension. So there
are trade-offs but I do not think anybody has managed to tease
out all the different attitudes that people would have to the
incentive effects from all of that.
Q173 Ms Buck: A very fair answer. But
you accept it as a piece of information—it is germane to
the argument.
Mr Turner: Yes, it is germane
to the argument. We are very clear—indeed, one of the purposes
of our report was to face this—that there are no free lunch
passes to this problem. If you want to solve one set of problems
that has a set of consequences.
Q174 Rob Marris: Tax relief on pension
contributions is pretty simple, yet your figures that you have
quoted, the 28% and 17% and so on, suggest that that knowledge
is out there. You say the complexity is a barrier to rational
savings. I would suggest to you that in fact you are assuming
what you are trying to prove there, because the figures you just
quoted suggest to me, given that tax relief is a simple concept,
that there are too many people who are just saying, "It's
all too complex, I can't be bothered dealing with it. Mañana."
Rather than the actual complexity per se putting them off,
they have yet to engage with the issue.
Mr Turner: I am trying to think
whether I agree with that. I think the answer is that there is
a form of complexity which can be a barrier, not because people
sit down and, as John says, put the towel round their head and
do the mathematics and do frankly what we have done. There is
a lot of hard work that has taken me a long time to understand
what is going on here—and we have been doing it as a sort
of professional job of work—and there are still bits that
surprise us in our understanding. I do not think it is that a
whole load of people go through that process and then say, "Ah,
this is so complicated, I am not going to make the decision,"
but the fact that it is so complicated means they do not even
start the process. When they first think about it, they have a
discussion and there are so many moving parts of the discussion
that they say, "I don't want this discussion." There
is an awful lot of behavioural economics which illustrates that
people simply do shy away from complex decisions but also decisions
which are very long term and decisions which involve an element
of stress because they are, to a degree, irreversible. I think
it is a reasonable inference that if you have a very high degree
of complexity, that makes people less likely to be willing to
engage even in the discussion.
Q175 Rob Marris: Is there a greater level
of saving in countries where there is less complexity?
Mr Turner: That is certainly something
we should look at in greater detail than we have. Let us be clear,
one of the things we set out in the report—and we leave
it as an open issue—is how many of the barriers to saving
are absolutely inherent within the myopia and the unwillingness
of people to make long-term savings decisions and make them for
them, and how many of them are the product of things we have done
to the system by complexity. We put that as an open issue between
the inherent and the fixable ones. I think I would accept that
it probably would be a useful analysis to see whether it is the
case that there are higher savings rates in those which have simpler
systems, and that is not a specific piece of analysis that we
have done.
Ms Drake: On the issue not simply
of saving, or not saving, but of actually saving enough. Even
if you are consciously wanting to save the complexity of the system
makes it very difficult to know what your savings will actually
produce for you as a pension at the end of the day. That can also
be a problem as well. There is that issue as well as whether to
save or not to save.
Q176 David Hamilton: In many cases, low
income persons do not even look at the complexity because they
do not have the income coming in to be able to look at it, and
many young people do not look at it because that is Never, Never
Land and a long way down the road, so it does not get to that
complexity stage. I would suggest that it is only when you get
to a certain income bracket, where you may have a bit of spare
money, that you begin to look at these issues.
Mr Turner: When we look at the
area where private savings is most required looking forward, it
is not at the lowest income levels. Under the present plans of
the Government rolled forward, replacement rates, income in retirement
relative to income in work, will stay stable as a ratio over time
on the basis of the current state intentions. That is true of,
as it were, the bottom 20% or 25% of the income distribution.
It is in the middle of the income distribution, say between the
income percentiles 25% and 75%, where the state is presently planning
to provide through state provision a lower replacement rate, and
I think it is in that group, where you are getting to the level
where there is enough income to make a savings decision, where
it is important to work out whether the disincentives to save
and complexity are reasons why they might not save, or whether
it is simply the case that people always make inadequate provision
and that savings for pensions is always ultimately done either
by states or by employers or by compulsion, etcetera. That is
the open issue which is a key issue that we have to consider in
the next year, whether these barriers to rational savings decisions
are inherent or ones which we have created. We certainly believe,
however, that if there was a chance of a voluntary system to work,
we have made it less likely by the complexity we have created.
Q177 Mr Goodman: I would like to ask
some questions about the future of Pension Credit, although we
have already been delving into it. One of the themes to date,
if I may pick up on John's point about people's confidence in
the system, is the sort of calculation you make about future saving
which you do not do with a towel round your head, as he put it,
but you have a general impression of what the system is like.
Since you published your report we have a new Secretary of State
who has come in. He has said—and I think it was new—that
there are no plans to continue with Pension Credit indefinitely.
He said it should be there until the problem of abject pensioner
poverty is solved—which, again, I think was a new take on
the situation. Looking at all that, what impact do you think that
will have on, to quote John, "people's belief in the system"
and what impact do you think it will have on the retirement saving
decisions?
Mr Turner: I think it is unlikely
that general discussions of ways forward in themselves have an
immediate feed through to savers' decisions. I do notice that
one retail firm, attempting to explain its somewhat poor pre-Christmas
results, is claiming that the Pensions Commission may have so
terrified people into savings, but I think the Financial Times
described this as reaching the limit of the ability of managers
to think of reasons why their sales are slowing down. I think
it would be unlikely if either our information in itself or general
responses from politicians and ministers were having an immediate
impact through to savings decisions. I think the more important
thing will be to develop over the course of the next few years
a way forward with pensions which does make it easier for people
to understand, and, in so far as we are relying on a voluntary
system of saving, has clear and understandable incentives to save.
The implication of what we are saying is that one element within
that will be that we do not relentlessly increase the number of
people covered by means-testing. My understanding of what Alan
Johnson has said is that that mathematical logic is, indeed, pretty
relentless: if we go forward with that indexation over the long
term—which the Government has said it would not do, but
if it were to do that—as a simple mathematical exercise,
an increasing problem develops. Therefore we are suggesting—and
I think Alan Johnson has also suggested—that some way needs
to be found which does not have that continual increase in the
number of people covered by means-testing. Whether that will ever
mean that nobody is ever covered by means-testing, I suspect,
is a bit unlikely, because I think it probably gets almost impossible
to design any welfare system which does not have some element
of means-testing somewhere in it, but the challenge, as we see
it, is to develop enough consensus on the way forward that we
can get agreement from Government but also across parties, across
opposition, about a way forward on pensions which is sufficiently
clear, sufficiently sustained and which does have clear incentives
for people to save which they can understand and which are then
maintained over several decades.
Q178 Mr Goodman: How would you advise
the Government to go about getting this consensus? The consequences
of these decisions about up-rating with prices and earnings are
pretty clear. If you up-rate Pension Credit with earnings, you
are drawing more people into means-testing and you are not solving
the Secretary of State's problem. If you up-rate it in line with
prices, you stand the risk of increasing abject pensioner poverty,
which he does not want to do; if you increase both the Pension
Credit and the Basic State Pension with earnings, well . . . .
Mr Turner: It is very expensive.
Q179 Mr Goodman: It is very expensive
and you are paying more tax and that is destroying your incentive
to save.
Mr Turner: The answer is that
there is no free lunch here, because sitting behind it are some
demographics driven by the fact that we are living longer and
having fewer children. That is why we face a set of problems to
which there is no easy solution and there are some choices we
have to make. We set out clearly that the range of choices overall
had to involve either accepting that there would be somewhat higher
taxes, or higher average retirement ages, or higher levels of
savings. We also suggested that the optimal solution was unlikely
to be pulling one of these levers alone but had to require some
mix. All I can say is that we would be thinking over the next
year about what we think the mix required is and we will come
up with recommendations about this time next year of what we propose.
But, by definition, given the problem you have described, it will
have to involve some choices to which some people will object.
Given the fundamental demographics, there is no easy route through
here.
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