I have to admit to expecting to talk to an empty room. There were over a hundred chairs laid out when I arrived at a Brighton Conference Centre lunchtime meeting on a new pension called CDC.

Within a couple of minutes of Prospect Union’s main conferencing breaking for lunch , the meeting room was full of delegates wanting to hear about the new pension scheme that their employers could be offering them and their colleagues from next year.

This was nothing to do with me and Terry Pullinger or Christine Daniell and Neil Walsh (two senior Prospect officials). It had a lot to do with responsibility. There appears to be a concern among union officials that I speak to that there are generations of workers who they look after who no longer get looked after by workplace pensions.

I asked one chap who looked my age and was concerned enough to approach me after an hour of questioning “why did you come?”

“Not for me” he said, “I came here for my kids”. 

This is intergenerational fairness in practice. The generation before this gentleman, had negotiated pensions for workers which he had benefited. But his children (he told me) knew nothing about pensions but that they were a deduction on their payslips.

This is why the union meetings I have been to lately have been packed and full of questions about “CDC”. Another person in response to my explanation of how CDC would work explained that this was how he had been taught his pension would work when he entered the workforce. I may not be doing him a service, but that looked to have been in the 1980s if not earlier.

This week I have meetings with eminent fund managers, knowledgeable actuaries and concerned pension managers who have woken up to what BlackRock estimate a third of DC money will move to over the next decade.

Terry Pullinger , me and Neil Walsh were asked as “pension experts” by someone who professed not to be “why are employers not gagging to do this”. I suspect that when we get to launching CDC in 2027 many will be. Because if employers wake up to not offering staff a better wage in retirement, things won’t work out well. To do this using a DC plan may get them there.  DC will work well for those who want flexibility and freedom from pensions, but it will not get ordinary people what more of what they think is a pension – what they get from the state pension.

As Terry kept repeating in his answers, the cost of doubling the state pension to pay a minimum wage in retirement (Pensions UK define it as just over £24k) means finding well over £200,000 in the pension pot. Actually. my best estimate is that to offer people inflation proofing of that wage and pension to the spouse means looking at closer to £300,000. But that assumes a lifetime saving at a minimum of 8% of band earnings and we know that many people take career breaks (especially women) and many people cannot work full time for many reasons.

What the people in the room wanted to hear was that there was something better for them to talk to their colleagues about and talk collectively to employers about moving from DC to CDC without further delay. We made it clear that having waited more than a decade to say this, we can do now. A better pension for many ordinary people, will be available from 2027.

I could look the man who asked me if I would help his children – in the face. I asked him where he worked, I will be there if asked. I heard a woman from a media company you will have heard of. I set a GPP up for them in the 1990s, I was ashamed to look her in the eyes.

When I go to the posh meetings this week to talk with actuaries and fund managers, I will not have their expertise but I will have the energy of the hundred or so Prospect delegates in that fringe meeting on a Sunday lunchtime, egging me on.

It is not good enough that we go on offering ordinary people a pot of money that they do not know what to do with. It is not sensible for us to offer them investment choices they don’t use. It is not sensible to offer people who have insufficient income to retire at state pension age the offer of their pension pot at 55 because they have protected retirement.

Indeed, in the hour I was with this group of people, I became furious with myself that I had not been having these meetings since I started understanding CDC when I sat at the feet of Derek Benstead and David Pitt-Watson , Kevin Westbroom and other clever folk.

I’m sorry that I didn’t listen to Glyn Jenkins of Unison ten years ago and that I did not help Terry Pullinger and the folk at Royal Mail spread the basic message of pensions, that however CDC is done, it provides up to 60% better pension than DC.

I know that isn’t the number for every DC saver and many will find ways to make the most of their pot but I know for the man who told me he was there for his children, I have a job to do now. We must make CDC pensions available to ordinary people via their employer. I am sure there is a better name than CDC for a wage in retirement ,  but there is no better way to buy income for workless years to come.