There are two competing views on how 14 million saver’s should have their money invested. This is a view that accords with the research that Nest commissioned from its members.

This is the view of Josephine Cumbo, a longtime friend to this blog.

This seems to me an important argument. Nest has £60bn of our money. That money needs to be invested for the good of 14 million people. You don’t need to be a mathematician to work out that the average value of people’s “pots” is only just over £4,000.  This cannot yet be considered to be enough to pay the average saver a pension.

But within ten years these numbers will explode and people will either consider their money in their Nest pot an investment or an income for the rest of their lives.

Around one in a hundred of Nest’s 14m savers manage their money by choosing to move it out of Nest’s default fund. There is no obvious reason for this to change when over the next ten years a proportion of these 14m move from growing their pot to spending it. Nest are putting in place a mechanism that will enable savers to consider they have a pension. We need not consider the details of the mechanism but I would call it “collective” as almost everyone will be having a regular income paid them with increases in that income depending on what Nest’s investments allow them to pay.

So I’d take Jo Cumbo’s argument a stage further and suggest that what Nest are responsible for is the retirement wage of a substantial proportion of this country’s workforce. Collectively, their views matter and it is important that those views are collected and publicised responsibly.

It would be good if this debate, that Jo Cumbo clearly wants, happens and that it happens on a stage where millions of Nest savers can watch and make their decisions.

People should understand the amount of “pension” they get from their Nest pension scheme is dependent on the investment of their payroll deductions and their employer’s contributions.

People should understand that choices made by Nest about how their money is invested is influenced by a number of factors which include the wishes of the savers.

We all should recognise that in the end Nest’s trustees have and will take decisions based on what is “best” for 14m savers and just as with “ESG” the principals they’ve signed up to with the Mansion House Accord will mean spending some of the money as Jo points out in a way that may limit the pension and the increases to it, that Nest can afford.

I am frustrated that the very real concerns that Jo Cumbo is expressing are being kicked into the long grass so that we can have engagement on saving more of our money for retirement.

I will be at the Chatham House this lunchtime at a “pension” conference.  I hope that rather than just talking amongst ourselves, we will find a way to get these real issues debated nationally – using the media that everybody uses!