The Pensions Review
Led by the Institute for Fiscal Studies in partnership with abrdn Financial Fairness Trust
Subscibe to the latest updatesWe are guided by a highly qualified steering group: chair David Gauke (former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions), Baroness Jeannie Drake (former Pensions Commissioner and former President of the TUC), Sir David Norgrove (Chair of the abrdn Financial Fairness Trust and former Chair of the Pensions Regulator) and Joanne Segars (former CEO of the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association).
This senior steering group will provide high-level strategic advice on the direction of the Review and on the merits and drawbacks of policy options that emerge from our work, and assist with disseminating our findings and recommendations to policymakers and the pensions industry. The steering group was originally chaired by the late Alistair Darling, we are grateful for his leadership and contributions to the Review.
The need for a pensions policy review
The time is ripe for a comprehensive review of pensions policy.
The economic and policy environment is hugely different from when Lord Turner’s Pensions Commission reported in 2005. The UK has seen a global financial crisis, a COVID-19 pandemic and, most recently, the highest levels of inflation in almost 40 years. Interest rates (at least until mid 2022) have been at historically low levels, homeownership rates have fallen, and there has been a large rise in self-employment with the growth of the gig economy. All of these have consequences for how people are – or should be – saving for retirement.
Policy-wise, the key recommendations of the Pensions Commission were implemented: a more generous state pension, at least for now; a higher state pension age; and automatic enrolment of most employees into workplace pensions. And they were implemented with much success. But the Pensions Commission did not foresee the triple lock, the New State Pension, pension freedoms, and reductions to the generosity of the working-age benefit system, amongst other reforms.
Given the scale of these changes, there has been a dangerous lack of strategic oversight of the retirement saving system since the Pensions Commission disbanded. There is a clear risk that much better outcomes for pensioner incomes in recent years compared with earlier decades could be fuelling complacency that future generations of pensioners will achieve similarly good – or even better – outcomes. It is in this context that we launch the Review.
The Review will run from spring 2023 to autumn 2025.
