There is a phrase that rings in my ears from the remarks of the Green Party, and especially the statements of Hannah. It refers to lining the pockets of billionaires at the expense of poor constituencies such as hers.

I had the chance to spend the second half of Friday afternoon discussing with two people (Derek Benstead and Chris Bunford) how we can do what Hannah asked us to do, make it possible for older people to live off their pension.

It is not hard to make money if you work in and around the City of London but it is much harder if you from Gorton and Denton , even as  a plumber and plasterer (Hannah Spencer is both – and an MP).

I am not young and working class and Derek and Chris are younger and more working class. Swap plumber for actuary but they share the same values and as we sat in the RSA, it became clear that we all want pensions to do what Hannah Spencer asked them to do, not line the pockets of the rich.

There are many millions of people relying on pensions that are not pensions but savings plans, which can do better (up to 60% better according to the DWP and our pension minister Torsten Bell). The little we can do is to turn pension provision back to a Mutual world where money is shared by all parties.

Derek Benstead goes to work through Gorton and Denton, his friend Hilary Salt was involved in the election and we discussed in our late afternoon meeting how we can make pensions fairer, how actuaries can do it, administrators can do it and how employers can be encouraged to help.

We all get together in Edinburgh for a jamboree in a couple of weeks. No doubt a lot of fine wine will be quaffed over discussions about how to make money out of other people’s pensions. But I suspect that over the next three and a half years of this Government’s tenure, the voices of young working people like Hannah Spencer will become louder.

At a speech on October 22nd 2025 and subsequently in a press release, our pensions minister promised a type of pension that could pay ordinary people up to 60% more than the DC pensions they have been put in so far since auto-enrolment began. In the past few weeks, Chris and I and several others have been working out how we can give up to 60% bigger pensions without crippling employers with pension increases.

If you would like to hear more about how this can be achieved through multi-employer CDC than stay tuned to this blog. I hope that we will be able to share some of what must for now stay with those employers who are under NDA, but shortly will be explained to all bosses and staff interested not in “lining the pockets of billionaires” but of paying pensions that older people can live off