A senior consultant at a Sipps firm has blasted the Government’s failure to explain the State Pension changes clearly enough.
Malcolm McLean, a Barnett Waddingham senior consultant, said efforts so far had fallen a long way short but welcomed the new Pensions Minister’s acknowledgement of the shortcomings.
Pensions Minister Baroness Altmann unveiled a new communications drive at the weekend, ahead of the introduction of the new State Pension in April next year.
She said: “Huge efforts have been put into reforming the mind-blowingly complicated State Pension system that exists today into something that, over time, will be clearer and fairer for everybody. But the job of explaining to people how the reforms will affect them hasn’t been done well enough.”

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Malcolm McLean, Barnett Waddingham senior consultant, said: “It is gratifying to note the acknowledgement from the Government that the job of explaining to people how the reforms will affect them hasn’t been done well enough.
“The limited efforts so far by the DWP to explain how previous accrued rights to the state second pension and past periods of contracted out discounts are taken into account have fallen well short of the mark. This together with very misleading statements about a new 'flat-rate' pension, which for the majority of people will be anything but, have added to the confusion and raised expectations which are unlikely to be met.”
He said: “It is critically important that today’s workers understand how the new State Pension will fit into their retirement plans so that they can indeed make the right decisions about saving and preparing for later life.”
Under the tagline “Our state pension is changing”, the campaign aims to broaden the public’s understanding of how the new State Pension will work and crucially, how people can find out how it affects them, based on their own National Insurance record.
Mr McLean said: “Of particular concern are those people within 10 years of reaching State Pension age, a group which also has access to new freedoms to spend private pension savings flexibly. Many of these people may want to base decisions about whether or not to draw down their private pension savings on their likely State Pension amount.
“Although the new pension will undoubtedly be simpler and easier to understand over the long term, the transitional arrangements for the changeover from the old system to the new are horrendously complex and not understood by many.
“For all these reasons above we should welcome the announcement of this new campaign and hope that it will put right some of the misconceptions which exist about these important changes to state pension provision and their interaction with private pension saving.”
The new advertisements target people within 10 years of reaching State Pension age, a group that also has access to new freedoms to spend private pension savings flexibly.