Politics are playing the right way right now. The Pension Minister has never got the prominence that Torsten Bell got last week when making announcements on how pensions were an important part of British pension policy.
There is a video on Reeves speaking on pension policy available from this link
Rachel Reeves hails pension funds’ vow to invest in UK
Later in the week, Pensions got the launch of a multi-employer CDC scheme with the opportunity to improve pensions by up to 60%. This was picked up in the national press because our Pension Minister’s policy initiatives are taken seriously.
You can read the article in the Daily Express here
In a month’s time. the “Pension Minister’s Budget” as it is known around my way, will be unveiled by Rachel Reeves but created by Torsten Bell.
I cannot remember a time when pensions is so at the heart of British political and British economic life and we will look back in future years and wonder why we did not understand what an opportunity we had.
We must not allow a return to the past 20 years of failure
We have a legacy of failure that lives on in a failing DB system and a Regulator still living in the overhang of 20 years of failure. It is hard to see the light ahead when we are obsessed by the possibility of things going wrong,
We have become obsessed by mandatory contribution rates, by not mandating investment strategies and by squabbling over annuities rather than pensions. We are selling pensions down the river to be shipped off to Bermuda on the reinsurance boat. We are obsessed by flex and fix and are in danger of missing a chance to reunite workplace savings with pensions – mutually and collectively.
We are allowing dark forces to undermine LGPS with prejudice against “gold-plated” pensions and we have a former Chancellor, calling for a dismantling of public service pensions.
Jeremy Hunt, former UK chancellor, has called for DB #pensions to end for new civil servants.
“there is no justification for new entrants to the civil service being enrolled into the DB schemes that add to our largely unfunded pension liabilities.”https://t.co/i1Bkp1dln2
— Josephine Cumbo (@JosephineCumbo) October 24, 2025
The said former Chancellor is quoted in the FT saying
I checked to make sure that Jo Cumbo had correctly translated what Hunt had said – here is what I read for awful verification.
Surely, too, there is no justification for new entrants to the civil service being enrolled into the defined benefit schemes that add to our largely unfunded pension liabilities?
I don’t suppose that he has the sway of Torsten Bell on Rachel Reeves. The reality of having an affordable public sector pension scheme , mainly unfunded. hugely efficient and keeping millions working for us is unsaid. But when the lunacy of dismantling it is mentioned, I am delighted it is by a “has-been Chancellor”.
The State Pension and are Public Pensions are for us to be proud of
The business of a pension minister is to get pensions paid and we have a state pension, unfunded public pensions and the LGPS to show that the state can do pensions very well.
We have a Pension Schemes Bill that looks like becoming an Act within months, we have CDC locked in to help us save for and get paid better pensions. We have investment coming to Britain so that people feel proud that their pensions are doing their bit. We have a country ready to grow.
Torsten Bell – launching a whole of life CDC plan this week
Above all, we have for once , the good luck of a Pension Minister who has the charisma, good humour , intellect and common sense we need. He is the real pension hero right now and now is the time we should be grateful. It will not be for ever, but right now we have a great pension minister who is doing great things.