If you google ‘Gordon Brown + pensions + buy to let’ there’s a whole load of newspaper articles from the 2000s that paint a picture of the Labour government ‘pinching’ from pensions (big tax grab in 1997) and then encouraging buy to let through the early 2000s. Two key articles here:
Booming stock markets in the 1990s led to even fatter pension fund surpluses and this proved an irresistible target for the Blairite government that came to power in 1997. The chancellor, Gordon Brown, abolished substantial tax relief on dividends that pension funds received on their investments.
The financial effect of this tax snatch was colossal. It was estimated that the loss of this tax relief had extracted, in total, over £118 billion of income by 2014. If this lost income had been even conservatively invested, pension funds may have benefited by an additional £230 billion.
theconversation.com/amp/britains-great-pension-robbery-why-the-defined-benefits-gold-standard-is-a-luxury-of-the-past-100844
(that article also explains that the extinction of defined benefits pensions was more complicated than just Gordon Brown’s actions though).
This 2006 article explains how Gordon Brown allowed SIPPs to be used for commercial property purchase and how lucrative property investment was, so you can see why people would have chosen buy to let over pensions as their vehicle to save for retirement:
Many British retirees were stunnedwhen the chancellor of the Exchequer,Gordon Brown, changed his mind lastDecember about allowing the money in self-invested personal pensions, or SIPPs, to beused to buy residential property in Britain andabroad…
…As for the commercial property sector, it hasserved investors well by outperforming stocksand bonds over the past 10 years, according tothe Investment Property Databank, a researchfirm based in London.
Last year [2005] the sector posted its strongest returns since 1993, with returns growing 19.1 percent, and bringing the annualized three-yearreturn in the sector to 16 percent, according tothe company.
Such results have made property "an extremely popular asset at present through allthe available routes, including SIPPs, andmany investors are seeking to diversify investment portfolios to include property, which issomething many were not doing a few yearsago," said Janet Measom, a property specialistat Morley Fund Management.
www.nytimes.com/2006/04/11/realestate/retirees-adapt-to-uk-pension-changes.html