The Minister for Pensions, Torsten Bell MP, addressed a full house of finance, HR and pension professionals at a lunch event hosted by Quantum Advisory at the Twenty Ten Clubhouse, Celtic Manor Resort in Newport on 4 December.
The event, held just over a week after the Autumn Budget, offered exclusive insights into the government’s ongoing work to improve the pensions landscape.
In his keynote, the Minister emphasised that “policy makes a difference”, citing three major success stories:
- Pension poverty has halved since the mid-1990s, now at 15%, thanks to measures like the State Pension triple lock and pension credit.
- Workplace pension participation has surged since auto-enrolment began in 2012.
- Recent reductions in deficit contributions to defined benefit schemes have freed up cash for employers to enhance employees’ retirement outcomes.
Despite these achievements, the Minister warned against complacency. He highlighted ongoing challenges including insufficient contributions to defined contribution workplace pensions, inequality in the system, with lower paid and self-employed workers often excluded from auto-enrolment, and increased risk and complexity for savers, particularly due to the proliferation of small pension pots and complex retirement decisions.
The Minister noted that these issues are being addressed through the Pensions Investment Review (published in May), the Pension Schemes Bill (now in the House of Lords), and the revived Pensions Commission which will report in 2027.
Stuart Price, Partner and Actuary at Quantum Advisory, said: “There’s a lot of change in the pension space, so it was special to welcome the Minister so soon after the Autumn Budget.
“As the UK dropped a place in this year’s Global Pension Index, the Minister’s insights on reform and fairness were especially timely. One key takeaway was the commitment to ‘levelling up’ between public and private sector pensions – an issue that must not wait another decade to be addressed.”
The event concluded with a Q&A session covering topics such as the pensions dashboard, auto-enrolment for the self-employed, salary sacrifice changes, inheritance tax and the Enterprise Investment Scheme.
