Consider this statement:

‘We will require employers to enrol all their employees into a workplace pension, including 18 to 21 year-olds and those working very few hours’

This is the most popular of seven pension policies I tested last month in a Public First poll. The words reflect one of the main options that the government’s Pensions Commission is considering: whether to widen automatic pension contributions to (almost) all employees. The public’s preference for this reform presumably reflects an intuition that pensions should be for everyone, regardless of earnings or stage of life.

We conducted the poll to understand people’s priorities for pension reform ahead of the Pensions Commission’s first report. That diagnostic paper will appear straight after the May elections, and once it is published the commission will turn its attention to solutions.

So far, almost no one has asked the public what they think about the reform options the commission is examining. This is hardly a surprise, as public engagement and understanding of pensions is low. But the poll reveals a clear pattern of preferences for pensions reform, which the commissioners and government should carefully consider.

Beyond the expansion of employee pension coverage, the next most popular policy statements are:

• ‘We will require employers to contribute more to employees’ pensions’
• ‘We will change pension tax relief so higher earners receive less support and lower earners receive more’

An increase in minimum employer contributions is firmly on the list of ideas the commission will examine. At the moment employers only have to contribute 3% of the slice of people’s earnings in excess of £6,240 per year. Trades unions and most of the pensions industry say employers should pay more (and many do by choice already). However, in the short term, this move is contested by employer lobby groups, following last year’s rise in National Insurance.

By contrast, the third most popular idea – reform of pension tax relief – is not really seen as being within the commission’s scope. Twenty years ago the first Pensions Commission was barred from examining the taxation of pensions and it is assumed that the Treasury is similarly resistant today. That’s a shame because pension tax relief really should be reviewed by an outside body in a holistic, empirical and considered fashion (rather than being the subject of fevered pre-Budget speculation every year). The poll suggests that the public may be more open to progressive tax reform than the pensions industry, which is mounting a stiff rearguard action in the face of fairly modest plans to cap the tax savings associated with pensions salary sacrifice.1

Chart 1: Pension policy announcements that would be most and least supported (using a max-diff methodology)

Our poll findings are based on a ‘max-diff’ methodology, rather than a simple ranking exercise. We repeatedly showed people randomised sets of four of the seven statements, and on each occasion asked them to say which policy would make them most and least supportive of a politician. Each statement was therefore evaluated hundreds of times, against all of the others, providing a far richer and more accurate reflection of public preferences. Chart 1 shows the percentage of the time that a statement was selected, positively or negatively, with the difference between these scores used to rank preferences.

Importantly, these results reflect people’s relative preferences, out of the reform options put before them. This really stands out when you look at the least popular policy:

‘We will stop planned increases in the state pension age and fund this by increasing taxes’

Raising the state pension age is not normally a particularly popular policy. But here, we find that a commitment to stop future pension age increases is disliked more than any other reform (at least when people are told it will need to be paid for by taxes).

It is no surprise that people also dislike the sixth placed policy, an increase in employee pension contributions, since this hits people in the pocket. Even though we mentioned in the poll that people can opt out of contributions, the measure attracted a negative response 30% of the time. The Pensions Commission and ministers will need to reflect on this when they think about levels of personal pension contributions.

The policy that came fifth out of seven was ‘we will introduce automatic pension enrolment for the self-employed, unless they chose to opt out’. This reform only impacts a minority of workers and it is associated with the most indifference. Of all the policies, it was selected least often (positively or negatively) and it was supported and opposed in almost equal numbers. Perhaps this gives the government some freedom of manoeuvre. I hope it does: I’ve previously written that the commission’s success will depend on whether it can develop a solution to under-saving by the self-employed.

The most contentious policy statement was ‘we will keep the ‘triple lock’ on the state pension permanently and fund this by increasing taxes’ which secured high levels of both support and opposition. It came in fourth place overall, but this reflects not mushy indifference but polarisation. Chart 2 shows how it was the least popular policy among 18 to 34 year-olds and the most popular among over-65s. All the other policies had fairly consistent levels of support across age groups.

Chart 2: Rank of pension policy preferences, by age

This poses a big question. Policy wonks are increasingly of the view that the triple lock should end sometime in the next decade, once the value of the state pension reaches a higher percentage of average earnings. This poll suggests that most younger adults could be persuaded by this. But for today’s pensioners, the triple lock remains totemic: even though our statement said the triple lock would need to be paid for by tax rises, respondents aged 65 and above selected it as their preferred policy on more than half the occasions that they saw it.

A lot more public engagement will clearly be needed as the work of the Pensions Commission continues. But the early picture painted by this poll points to a policy package that might include wider pension coverage, higher employer contributions, a pension for the self-employed and perhaps a managed end to the triple lock. But nothing can be taken for granted. The political clout of employers and current pensioners could easily stand in the way.