This is one of three blogs this morning on the change of attitude to pensions that this Government is bringing about. Bell is right to boast os his achievement. Richard Smith gets the import of what’s going on.
First let’s get the scoop captured by Corporate Adviser’s Christopher Marchant who’s quoting from the latest bundle of correspondence between the disgraced Mandelson and the well regarded Pensions Minister Torsten Bell.
Pensions secretary Torsten Bell described his brief as a gig that was “safe politically”, and an “interesting” area when it came to matters of policy
and
Bell says to Mandelson: “I’m fine. Pensions ministering is a safe politically gig, and an interesting one policy wise. Then just help [Chancellor] Rachel [Reeves] and [Prime Minister] Keir [Starmer] out when asked on the side.”
Richard Smith’s question is whether Torsten Bell is right and of course the answer is right. We have not had a pensions minister lose their job in my memory and there have been some pretty dull ones.
There are three major issues that a Pensions Minister has charge of, all three big ticket in terms of sums of money involved. The first is the State Pension and how it increases (or shrinks). The second is national insurance that funds the welfare of pensioners (health and welfare benefits), the third is occupational pensions (public sorted and private pensions a bit of a mess).
Private pensions are “interesting” because they are funded and a visible part of the “growth” of Britain (or lack of). Private pensions are a “job half done” (a much used phrase) meaning contributions have been sorted but not the conversion of contributions into pensions.
Where Bell can help the Cabinet is in demonstrating that a complex subject (pensions) can be simplified sufficiently to get change into a Bill and then an Act that makes a genuine difference to Labour’s story today and at the next election. If I were Bell, I’d be disappointed that what he’s done in the Pensions Schemes Act and in the second round of CDC legislation has not been trumpeted by Reeves and Starmer as a political success.
Despite success in pensions (and we have now had three successful ministers in the last fifteen years), we have yet to see a Pensions Minister make it to the Cabinet.
Laura Trott is closest -being shadow minister for education but her time as pensions minister was not a success and she headed for the Treasury as soon as she could. Emma Reynolds headed the same way. You could not so far call Webb, Opperman and Bell much more than one trick ponies (not in political terms anyway).
The success of Pensions to its Minister is yet to come. We will have the Pensions Dashboard next year which will be Bell’s success (even if it could be owned by Minister going back to the start of the century). Bell will oversee the growth of CDC (even if he’s had little to do with its gestation) and he will have an open goal in winning popularity for the secondary legislation that makes the Pension Schemes Act happen.
At a time when political going will be tough for those in the Cabinet, Bell is well off keeping his powder dry and working with the Treasury (and to some extent the DWP) on detailed policy that could make a difference.
I agree with the thrust of Richard’s post
Instinctively, pensions sit top right: technical enough to repel populism and sufficiently consequential to attract talent
Unless the political mood in Wales turns back to Labour in the next three years, Bell will be a one term MP and he won’t mind that. He has a way back into business as his predecessors have taken or he may return to his think-tank.
Although his fraternal correspondence with Mandelson will raise a few eyebrows, they are not the stuff to cause concern. Bell shares with Mandelson a high self-regard but unlike Mandelson he does not seem to have made bad friends.
