End of the road for the Money Advice Service?

In some respects this is a fitting epithet for much of what we euphemistically refer to as ‘PR spin’; it is absolutely applicable to the derisory nod the Treasury gave the Money Advice Service after eschewing it in all important respects for its pension guidance.

Late last week, it emerged that the Citizens Advice Service had been chosen to provide the face-to-face channel of the service, which is being corralled together by the Treasury. This news followed confirmation from The Pensions Advisory Service that it had been chosen to deliver remote telephone and web chat alternatives.

And Mas? Some of its staff are being seconded to the Treasury to provide support to the web offering under the umbrella, which will all operate under a single brand.

Talk about a slap in the face.

In truth, this snub - and not including the government’s flagship money information service in the provision of direct guidance on its radical retirement reforms is nothing if not a snub - has been coming for some time.

In truth, this snub has been coming for some time

Since its launch to much fanfare in 2011, replacing the Consumer Finance Education Body, the reputation of Mas has deteriorated steadily amid imbroglios over its bloated budgets, spasmodic signposting to advice and asinine public relations gaffes.

This all came to a head in March of this year when, under intense pressure from the influential Treasury Select Committee, then financial secretary to the Treasury (now culture secretary) Sajid Javid did a U-turn on keeping a review of the service in-house and kicking it into the long grass.

A review was originally proposed in 2013, amid widespread complaints from the industry that pays handsomely to fund a service which will cost £81m this year, which the Treasury said it would conduct and would take two years to report back.

In May, Andrea Leadsom, economic secretary to the Treasury, confirmed a now independent report would be led by Christine Farnish, who was previously chief executive of the National Association of Pension Funds, and would report back by the end of the year.

The consultation published in July asked for views on Mas’s statutory objective, how it is funded, and its digital strategy.

In the light of Mas losing out on most of this key work to deliver arguably the most important money information service the government has ever set up, perhaps an even wider question over the usefulness of the organisation in its current guise needs to be asked.