A lot of fun and passion, early in the morning
A blind seer, Lord David Blunkett spoke to Conference with a vision that you get from experience. It was to an early morning crowd (any time is early for some, when the night extends into the early hours).
His the voice of the north, of Labour’s previous Government, he was a Minister 7 of the 13 years of that Government. He oversaw the first Pension Commission and hence the decisions around auto-enrolment, he is an unsung pension hero who was rightly given a plenary of his own.
He did not rest on his laurels but spoke as he does in the Lords as an advocate for increased minimum wage, the maintenance of benefits and for all parts of the UK to be treated as one and equally.
There are three in this shot!
It disappears in the digital image above Emma Douglas and David Blunkett’s head but in profile is the dog who guides Blunkett physically. I’d like to think that Blunkett guides us morally. This Conference needed some of the energy in the early years of this century when the nation’s growth was immense , the Turner Commission immense and the emergence of critically important welfare (including pension credit for pensioners) happened.
This spirit of progress was not just from the Labour party. Blunkett named David Willett as well as Malcolm Wicks, and he named Liberal’s Steve Webb. This generation will still be influential through Nick Pearce (who advised Blunkett) and Jeannie Drake, who shares the Upper House’s bench with Blunkett. Bryn Davies deserves a mention – another peer from the left who is active in making fairness at the heart of policy for future Governments.
This blog gets guidance from a generation before mine, from Andy Young, Con Keating, Peter Cameron-Brown and Derek Scott, only Peter of the Oldies was at this event in person but the others were here in spirit and I hope they recognise that an older generation book ended this Conference.
Much of what has happened since 2010 has worked. The auto-enrolment implementation between 2012 and 2019, the simplification of the State Pension in 2016 and the introduction of the Triple Lock in 2010. These were ruthlessly driven through , by Webb and a Government who knew what it was doing and got on with it.
Looking back, we can see that things started going wrong in 2014. Pension Freedom, though it excited us at the time is now being relegated to the “opt-out” from pensions not the main event for those saving into pots. Other plans we had expected to see in 2016 (which included Super Funds, CDC and the Pension Dashboard) have not happened. This has been as a result of weak political leadership and poor implementation of ideas from a previous period of growth. We will look at 2016 to 2024 as the years of dithering and incompetence.
The end of David Blunkett’s era has been upon us fifteen years. We have had none of him in leadership since 2010 but we have seen in the new Pension Minister something that we saw in an era before. Frank Field, Labour’s great maverick is with us no longer but he was a man of the north west just as Blunkett is a man of Yorkshire (north east just!).
This blog is a thanks to him turning up at 9,15 am, well done those of us delegates (and press) who made it to the hall to listen. We can forget the interval from 2016 to 2024 – nothing happened that isn’t having to be redone .
The blind seer
