Government urged to announce Pensions Bill

The Government has been urged to announce a Pensions Bill during the King’s speech at the state opening of Parliament tomorrow. The call has come from the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association (PLSA). Nigel Peaple, director of policy and advocacy at the PLSA, said: “Given that everyone agrees pensions policy needs reform, and having already confirmed it will conduct an independent review of pensions, the Government should keep up the pace of change by announcing a Pensions Bill in The King’s Speech tomorrow.” He said the bill would allow the Government to quickly progress any recommendations arising from its pensions review and pick up important areas of policy reform already initiated by the previous Government. He said that includes necessary legislation to require schemes to provide more support to savers at retirement, to grant TPR wind-up powers required under the proposed value for money framework, and for the creation of the DB Superfunds regime. Mr Peaple said: “If the Government is serious about significantly improving the retirement incomes of today’s workers, a Pensions Bill should also set a timeline for gradually increasing minimum automatic enrolment contributions from the current level of 8% of a band of earnings to 12% of total earnings. “We would also expect the pensions minister to shortly propose secondary legislation to expand the scope of automatic enrolment by introducing saving from the first pound of earnings and lowering the qualifying age to 18 instead of 22.” The PLSA said it is ready to provide expertise to the pensions review to help the Government achieve its ambitions for growth and improving retirement incomes for savers. Earlier this year the PLSA and the Association of British Insurers called called on the Government to boost UK growth through greater pension investment. They called for better adequacy in DC pensions and a bigger pool of investable capital. They said most private sector pensions are DC but low contributions risk retirement shortfalls. The organisations also said regulations should be made to work better for investment and savers. In short, regulation must make it as simple as possible to invest in illiquids where it is in the interest of savers. The government should also increase investment opportunities, they said, to develop an effective pipeline of assets with good risk reward profiles for pension schemes to invest in UK growth. Finally they said there should be a continuing focus on consolidation to ensure that consolidation takes place in the best interests of members.

Government urged to announce Pensions Bill

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