Tom Stevenson: Savers and investors receive some long-awaited good news

WATCHING out for government announcements on savings and investments has been like waiting for a bus: you stand in the rain for ages and then three come along at once. For years now we have moaned that the government has done nothing for Britain's increasingly downtrodden savers, then in a matter of weeks there's a rush of proposals - some of which actually make sense.

All of a sudden the authorities seem to have understood that public policy can make a difference to our national savings crisis.

To be fair to the previous government, Labour set the ball rolling a year ago with an increase in the annual Isa allowance from 7,200 to 10,200. Coupled with the promise to keep increasing the limit in line with inflation (worth another 480 a year from next April) this is a major step forward for savers. It means that a couple can put aside more than 20,000 a year, pay no further income tax on interest or dividends, forget about capital gains tax and, quite legally, not even have to tell the taxman.

The collective outbreak of common sense took a further step forward last month when the government said it was investigating the idea of a Junior Isa to replace the defunct Child Trust Fund. Saving for children is surprisingly complicated, with tax issues for the donor and a dearth of products that are simple and tax-efficient. The Junior Isa is an important step towards recreating the savings culture that we have lost in recent years.

The sensible approach to saving in childhood has been matched by some much needed clarity at the other end of life, where the previous government's horrendous proposals for a taper on tax relief for higher earners' pension contributions threatened to bang the final nail into the coffin of retirement saving.

Putting a 50,000 annual cap on the pension contributions that attract tax relief will save the government money but will do so in a way that doesn't hit the ordinary saver prudently putting something aside for their old age. And tax relief continues to be at a saver's marginal rate so pensions continue to have the merit of simplicity.

I'd like to see the government go one further step and dismantle the artificial distinction between short-term Isa savings and long-term pension savings altogether. One use-it-or-lose-it annual allowance which an individual could put into whichever savings vehicle suited them at the time, with the ability to roll over Isa savings into a pension when the time felt right, would really be something the savings industry could get behind.

A final piece of potential clarity came with the government's confirmation that it is looking into simplification of the state pension, with a flat-rate single payment of something like 140 a week the likely result.The announcement left plenty of unanswered questions about matters such as past contributions to the state second pension, but in principle a flat-rate pension is a great idea. It means that everyone will know what they can expect from the state in retirement, and that means that they can plan any supplementary saving from a position of knowledge rather than today's fog of imprecision.

Of course, it has not all been good news, and one of the reasons the announcement about the state pension seems to have been rather rushed out is the government's need for something positive to say amid all the gloom and doom of the Comprehensive Spending Review.

The coalition has made no bones about the difficult decisions it has to make to reduce the size of the UK's budget deficit, but the reality of job losses, shelved projects, higher taxes and poorer services was never going to be an easy sell.

It's the so-called "squeezed middle" of people who earn too much to gain from the state's recent generosity but are far from rich either who are paying much of the cost of the retrenchment. Three areas which will hit them hardest are the repeal of child benefit for middle earners, any potential hike in the cost of a university education and a significant delay in the date at which the state pension can be taken by women especially.

We estimate that a 30-year-old woman (who now can't pick up a state pension until she is 68) will be more than 90,000 worse off than if she could still retire at 60.

So the government is in some ways moving in the right direction as far as savers and investors are concerned. But the onus will be more and more on individuals to make up for what the state can no longer provide. That will mean starting earlier, saving harder and sticking at it for longer than we have been used to.

• Tom Stevenson is investment director at Fidelity Investment Managers