Hard on the heels of last week's Autumn Statement today HM Treasury published draft legislation for next year's Finance Bill. Technically this is labelled as a consultation: comments to ensure the legislation works as intended are welcomed, but not comments on the policy. The Bill itself is to appear after the Spring Budget expected in March 2012.

Taken together the full set of draft clauses and explanatory notes comes to 1,107 pages, although the material pertaining to pensions is mercifully brief and more readily identifiable from the HMRC page on Autumn tax updates and draft Finance Bill 2012 clauses.

The main pensions provisions are changes to the Asset-backed Contributions legislation (already announced in the Autumn Statement); a proposal for limited scheme-specific trivial commutation of personal pensions (long hoped-for by the industry); and a clampdown on QROPS which was not anticipated.