The Work and Pensions Committee – taking pensions seriously

 

We face a relentless dumbing down of pensions to a point where our latest pension champion failed her Maths GCSE on the grounds that she wouldn’t need Maths because she was going to be famous.

So it’s good to be reminded that those who Govern us take work and pensions a little more seriously. Yesterday the DWP announced the composition of its Work and Pensions Commitee.

The following Members of Parliament have been appointed:  

Name	Party
Debbie Abrahams (Chair)	Labour
Johanna Baxter	Labour
Peter Bedford	Conservative
Neil Coyle	Labour
Steve Darling	Liberal Democrat
Damien Egan	Labour
Gill German	Labour
Amanda Hack	Labour
John Milne	Liberal Democrat
David Pinto-Duschinsky	Labour

(with one vacancy to be filled).

Stephen Timms has stepped down as Chair but following him and Frank Field will be a third Labour grandee, Debbie Abrahams.

Professional Pensions, that definitely takes work and pensions seriously has put together the above graphic, published Robin Ellison’s eviscerating blog and kindly give us a photo-montage  of the MPs who will serve our interests in the next five years

We shouldn’t ignore the Work and Pensions Committee. It is an important break on the worst excesses of pension policy, it provides a sense check to the guidance given by our regulators and in its wider role, it looks at the benefit system and how the apparatus of the state pension is working.

Currently there is no agenda for the Committee, its website is devoid of interest, but we can be sure that just as in previous parliaments , we will have our crisis’ – out BSPS’ , our LDI’s and we will continue to see the WPC take evidence, deliver reports and exert influence as the principal oversite for the DWP and TPR.

If we want accountability, we want a strong and functioning WPC and I hope that the current committee will continue the good work of Committees before.

Timmy Mallett- Gemma Collins, if this is who we want to champion pensions – then they get no megaphone here.

But if the WPC want input on the important issues that face people as they save,  stop working and live their later lives, they could do worse to read the work of some of the commentators on this blog.