Ludwig...thanks for your post at 09:31 yesterday. We all get a bit carried away sometimes, even me !
The potential problem that I can see for the future is that some people will blow their pension money unwisely. The reason that successive governments have allowed tax relief on their contributions is to encourage people to save for income in retirement, not to buy an expensive car. Its not the governments job to help people make expensive purchases, through the tax system. Pensions were an exception.
If those people then find themselves in financial hardship in the future and many will do so, it is likely that they will have no option but to fall back on extra State aid to supplement their meagre retirement income. Any future government, of any political hue, will find it difficult to ignore 100,000's of poor pensioners, in poverty because they were allowed to waste their pension savings.
I would go further and suggest that if the annuity option isn't compulsory in the future, then tax relief on pension contributions should cease. And we can start by
scaling back the overly generous tax relief given to higher-rate taxpayers.