I did not expect my opening tweet at LGPS’ summer event to be about Nick Watt and Nigel Farage.
Not sweating at #LAconf25 Nick Watt. So far this Event is about @reformparty_uk . pic.twitter.com/kg7yxxNMNR
— Henry Tapper (@henryhtapper) June 16, 2025
I suspect that several Reform councillors are in this conference and indeed now govern this DB pension. The man within Reform who has his knife out for what Reform consider the wasteful spending of LGPS is Richard Tice.
His solution to the waste is to
- Close LGPS to new entrants
- Make those accruing get less in their pay packet for getting more pension
- Slash wasteful spending by LGPS on procurement
This is likely to be considered popular amongst people struggling to build up a pension from workplace pensions or those out of pensions altogether, the self-employed and those caring rather than earning. It strikes me that there is a new pensions class war building up and this was the first time I had heard it articulated in a PLSA event.
It felt uncomfortable as , like many in the hall, my belly was full of lunch and what we had come to hear was about a pension scheme that is converting council tax ,worker and employer money into the kind of pensions that were predicted when LGPS was set up. Delivering on promises is clearly not a virtue for Reform.
A war on woke
Farrow’s Doge lays into Net Zero and DEI , calling out the Kent fund for paying £2,4m on social care and procurement. If this sounds like America, Trump’s America, it is because Farage has worked out that those outside the world of liberal values are happy to be fed this stuff.
Rather than taking his angst out on Mel Stride and Liz Truss, Nick Watt was asking a packed hall to recognise that reform’s war on woke includes the payment of pensions to the people who waste reform payers money. Farage and Tice are seen as the biggest threat to Labour’s tenure of Government and Nick Watt argued that they would be threat to LGPS – the fulfillment of woke culture.
A threat from Reform and a threat from the Pension Scheme Bill.
I suspect that the Pension Scheme’s section on LGPS is a rather more immediate threat to LGPS than the advance of Reform.
Two Pools – Brunel and Access have been told they have to get on with handing over assets to the remaining pools and with an uncompressing timetable , the Government has spelt that the changes to the infrastructure of LGPS need to be in place by 2026, this is in advance of any other aspects of the Pension Schemes Bill and it was hardly surprising that panel after panel put forward good reasons to not rush into change.
Here , as an outsider, I wondered if I was hearing a conference out of step with one of the key changes in how pension are run. The Government is moving away from diversity, competition and let’s face it, wasteful procurement and it has lost patience with the speed of change. I was sitting a couple of yards away from Torsten Bell when he told the Edinburgh PLSA investment conference that there would be no rolling back the timetable for LGPS.
LGPS must show it is in step with Government
Reform’s War on Woke and the Government’s Pension Schemes Bill need countering from LGPS with a positive approach. The Government has said that it wants DC pensions to run defaults into retirement that turn pots into pensions. That is what LGPS do for members who are in their first year in the Scheme.
There is no reason why LGPS cannot promote this service as being in step with Government, unless it is uncomfortable with the facility.
The Government is looking to establish CDC schemes up and down the country but has little capacity to operate what is effectively open DB but with the guarantees on contributions not outcomes. Administratively it is within the capacity of LGPS and I made this point in a question to a panel.
John Hamilton of Stagecoach has suggested that LGPS becomes the major force in CDC administration and I think it is an idea worthwhile pursuing.
Here are two ideas that I think have merit and I hope will have some discussion both at this three day conference and more widely. LGPS is making great steps forward in how it does things but it has yet to capture either the Government’s or Reform’s imagination. But the people who I meet at these events are the kind of people who private pensions could and should work with, because they have expertise and capability to show the private sector ways of delivering a new pension culture.
Nick Watt at the LGPS conference in St Neot