The Reform view of pensions is hypocritical in the extreme. My friends at Prospect Union point this out with greater force than I can

How hypocritical can you get? Reform MPs want to close public service pension schemes for millions of ordinary workers but are happy to benefit from membership of the scheme for MPs.

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— Prospect Pension (@prospectpension.bsky.social) August 25, 2026 at 9:53 AM

As far as I am aware, the alternative for Reform to DB pensions is saving into a DC pot. There has been no mention made of providing an alternative pension , a collective pension.

CDC as it is known is a way for organisations that have moved from DB pensions into savings plans. They may make sense to those who are not so sophisticated that they can manage their retirement themselves.

If Reform were to pay attention to solutions rather than just reach for the lowest common denominator, they’d work out that a CDC pension plan is precisely what the people who vote for them want. They want a pension and a job and CDC gives them both.

There will come a point where sensible answers to problems like financing retirement are needed. If they ditch DB pensions because they can be too expensive to employers (and usually the taxpayer) then a DC pot is not a replacement, it’s a continuation of a problem that’s been building 20 years.

We have in that time got many people saving but they’re not saving for pensions but for pots of money that don’t provide a pension. Collective pensions that are paid for by employers who don’t want to take the risk of contributions escalating in a DB plan, is exactly the plan that Reform should be adopting.

Why Tice and Farage have not opened discussions with the DWP and TPR, with the unions and the employers I do not know. All of them should be open to discussions with Reform, if those discussions are to the benefit of working people who pay under auto-enrolment a sub for their retirement.

I do not expect Tice and Farage to reverse back up the cul-de-sac they’ve driven down, but there is always hope. They could make sense by adopting CDC – but solutions aren’t yet on the agenda and I doubt they’re going to be.