Sid was saying much the same thing 40 years ago

The FT’s report of the posh slap-up in the Mansion House last night didn’t fill me with excitement. Tell Sid (2.0) isa big idea, about as much innovation as “let’s buy you an  annuity to retire on ” – what I got from DWP  when I asked for value for my money .

Helen Miller

I don’t know Helen Miller but I wish I did. She makes sense in this conversation with the FT

Despite policies to boost public investment that would pay off in time,

“it doesn’t feel like a radical change”,

Helen Miller, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies think-tank, said earlier on Tuesday.

“Growth should be the number one mission,” she added. “We should be throwing the kitchen sink at it but it doesn’t feel like that.”

It’s fine to have Ministers broadcast alright, but if your civil servants talk shite, you don’t get anywhere – my version of Helen Miller’s complaint.

Carol Knight

I was due to have it out with Carol Knight of Tisa yesterday pm but she had to go off to the BBC, I hope they asked her and she gave the sense she gave to me earlier in the month. Like I say, the top level talk is full of vision but if regulation still throttles innovation, then we have gone nowhere.

Please wait for secondary legislation

When I called for the DWP’s support for a return to pensions from  “decumulation defaults”, I was referred to the need for “secondary legislation” to ensure that pensions were in the public’s best interest (oh and a consultation). I was asked why I didn’t just settle for annuities. When I asked about whether anybody thought swapping their cash for annuities was VFM, I was told that the Treasury and PRA and BOE preferred to listen to the ABI.

Secondary legislation will clarify, please do not move over the line till at earliest 2028.

I am not standing for this prevarication. I remember the DWP telling us that we would have the legislation for Superfunds and capital backed pensions by 2023. Now its pension schemes bill is saying 2030. The Pension Regulator has an innovation sandbox for people like me to bury our heads in regulatory mire.  Let me make it clear, I am 63 and I am furious that despite all the promises from the Pension Minister, the DWP and Treasury are still stuck in de-risking my finances.

Last night we had more high level talk from Rachel Reeves

You can watch the delivery of the speech by pressing the like button above.(cunning way to get support).  Or you can read the FT’s comments on this link

She should have been sat with me against the top policy makers of the DWP on Monday lunchtime in a windowless room of negativity. It is not just the City that needs purging, it is Westminster departments. Guys in Caxton House, here is what the boss says.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves advocated cultural change in Britain’s attitude to risk during her address to City grandees at Mansion House on Tuesday evening

How can we still not have a credible way to deliver CDC beyond Royal Mail? It will soon be ten years since Pullinger and Benstead started asking for it. Where is the multi-employer version?

Writing in the Financial Times, the chancellor said an excessive safety-first approach was not seen in any of Britain’s global competitors, adding: “It is bad for businesses, bad for growth and bad for working people.”

I am supposed to say “bravo” to Rachel but I don’t. I do not want any big-talk from her and from Emma Reynolds and from Torsten Bell. I want action so that people like me and Edi Truell and a bunch of great guys from banks who want to put up capital can get on with sorting British pensions out. Edi was talking with Cameron in 2016, now he is ill with frustration and I am his POA

POA typically stands for Power of Attorney. It’s a legal document that authorizes a person (the “attorney-in-fact” or “agent”) to act on behalf of another person or entity (the “principal”) in business or financial matters. 

So here it is Rachel and Emma and Torsten. If you want to be taken seriously, you need to deliver pensions, you need to deliver value for money and you need to allow people like me and Edi to do so NOW – not in five years time.

A tide of support from people in the front rows