Robert Cochran has consistently banged the drum for workplace pensions and he’s been a supporter for all that Guy Opperman held dear when it come to saving and engaging Scottish Widows with their pension. If you have some time and can plug into his pod it can be reached from this linked in post.

Opperman has not tied himself as Steve Webb did to a single organisation. I am sure that Scottish Widows would benefit for employing Opperman as Royal London benefited from Webb.

Instead Opperman has built a portfolio of customers including firms in the UK , the Middle East and in extremity – South Africa. He has been on tours to Australia and spoken alongside pensions dignitaries around the globe. Generally he makes sense.

In this pod he looks back nostalgically at his time as pensions minister and is particularly interesting as he talks his way through the slow disintegration of his party in Government. He is touching as he explains how he got his pensions legislation through despite the indignities meated out to him by Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. Rishi Sunak comes out well in this (I know he had a strong relationship with the then DWP SOS, now shadow Chancellor- Mel Stride.

He is kind to the Labour Government’s pension team who he sees as seeing through Pension Superfunds and CDC which he sees himself as initiating. I suspect there is something of a rewrite here, but let it be, he was an early adopter of ideas which may be coming to fruition this decade.

Less successful may have been the attempts to make workplace pensions fill the gap left by the demise of SERPS on one side and private DB pensions on the other. The harsh reality is that his first challenge was to implement the 2017 auto-enrolment enhancements to contributions. He did not get them ( he says because of the Treasury and he blames the Treasury for failure to fulfil a promise made nearly 10 years ago. Will it make the cut-out of 2030 and change of Government, Opperman doesn’t think so.

Opperman wasn’t universally liked within his own department and certainly not by Steve Webb. It is hard not to like him out of Government just for his good humour and Harrovian good manners. I’ve had good conversations with him over the years and thoroughly enjoyed his podcast. Robert Cochran is his kind of man and Guy Opperman is a man’s man. All the same, he lacked clout in Government and in that he’s been bettered by Torsten Bell.

Whatever we got from Guy Opperman, is secondary to what we’re getting from the soon to be Pension Schemes Act. But GO’s Pensions Act sent us towards a consolidated private system which we might yet get!

He lent the job of Pensions Minister a fresh exuberance we have not seen since!

Opperman’s exuberant style