Here is a helpful post. Here are its characters.

Andrew Blair is an old friend from the DWP who was a much younger man when I last saw him. His critique of Nick Pearce’s comments are brief and to the point.

Nick Pearce is one of those commissioned to point a way forward for Britain’s retirement financing – the Pension Commission.

Nick Pearce , speaking for the Pension Commission is impressed by the Netherlands. Whether we will see a replication in Britain of the simplicity of the Dutch partnership looks unlikely. Unions have a much stronger say alongside employers and Government in what has developed and is developing. But I see a move to this partnership in the UK. The unions will have much more influence if CDC takes a grip as many think it will.

As for governance, I would add that as well as fairness, the Dutch system is governed with an eye to value for money, focussing on the maximum benefits for contributions that ultimately are made by those at work for themselves when beyond work. Concepts such as a “wage in retirement” are much more familiar in the Netherlands than currently in Britain.

That the Dutch have managed to achieve a much higher level of contributions through the partnership of unions, employers and Government than has been achieved in Britain through Government and employers is telling. It seems to the Commission that member representatives are relatively under represented not just in the structure of pensions, but in the governance that ensures value for money (efficiency) and fairness. Here the importance of service providers (administration and investment) is in helping to deliver not in a competition to under-price each other.

This looks to have left a favourable impression on the commission and I would be surprised if they were not equally impressed by Denmark. By coincidence, we heard from a spokesman from Denmark’s collective pension service providers, Christian Hildahl, in London. Like the Netherlands, Denmark has a strong system of collective pensions.

One of the aims of the Pension Commission is to improve adequacy and clearly they have achieved that in the Netherlands. The progress to the higher contributions that the Netherlands have achieved is through partnership and governance. We need to do what the Dutch have done and win the people round to the pensions designed for them.

We have much to learn on how to do this from the Dutch.