Pension Commission to look at why four-in-ten fail to save enough
People drawing their pension 25 years from now are set to be £800 or 8% worse off per year than their counterparts today, the department said, with four in 10 people currently not saving enough for their retirement.Rather than launching a new commission from scratch, the government said it was reviving the "landmark" Turner Pension Commission which reported in 2006, under the last Labour government, and led to the roll-out of automatic enrolment into pension saving. As a result 88% of eligible employees are now saving, up from 55% in 2012, the DWP said.Despite that progress, the DWP said new analysis revealed "stark" findings including that:more than three million self-employed workers are not saving into a pensiononly one-in-four low earners in the private sector are saving into a pensiononly one-in-four of people of Pakistani or Bangladeshi heritage are savingThe analysis also found a 48% gender gap in private pension wealth among people currently retiring, with a typical woman receiving just over £100 a week and a man receiving £200 from private pension income. The commission is not designed to directly address issues around the cost of the state pension.Recent reports have raised questions over the affordability of the "triple lock", introduced in 2010, which guarantees that state pensions will rise every year by the same amount as average wages, inflation, or 2.5%, whichever is higher.As the population ages, and people live longer, the cost of that policy is set to grow significantly.Its cost is forecast to be three times higher by the end of the decade than was original estimated, after successive years of high inflation, followed by strong wage growth.
Instead, the relaunched Commission, which will report in 2027, will look at savings in private sector pensions.It will bring together trades unions, employers and independent experts, some of whom also took part in the original Commission. It will look at what is preventing people from putting more into their retirement pots and will aim to build a national consensus around future strategy.Kate Smith, head of pensions at pension firm Aegon, urged the Commission to make "bold, brave and possibly unpalatable recommendations", including "significant increases" to auto-enrolment contributions after 2029.Paul Nowak, General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress described it as "a vital step forward"."Everyone deserves dignity and security in retirement, but right now many workers – especially those in the private sector – will find themselves without enough to get by on," he said.
Caroline Abrahams, charity director of Age UK said that while the state pension provided the bulk of income for most pensioners, it was "hugely important" to consider the role of private savings, as the current system was leaving many pensioners struggling to make ends meet."Hopefully this can be avoided in future and particularly disadvantaged groups, including low-paid women and self-employed people on low incomes, can be helped to put money aside when appropriate for them to do so," she said.
Catherine Foot, director of the think tank Standard Life Centre for the Future of Retirement, said that 17 million people were not saving enough to achieve the retirement they wished to have."The next two decades is when the effects of the savings crisis will really start to bite," she said.It was crucial that the Commission was able to take a step back and view the system in its entirety," she added."There's an opportunity to examine how different elements of the system are working together."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
BBC News
10 minutes ago
- BBC News
Forward thinking
The team most in need of goals is Manchester United.Last season, Mohamed Salah of Liverpool and Alexander Isak of Newcastle combined to score far more in the Premier League (52) than United did as an entire squad (44).Considering they had splurged more than £200m last summer to just about zero effect, it is no surprise that new defenders are way down on their list of priorities this everyone else, they are looking ahead by investing £62.5m on Matheus Cunha and another £65m-plus on Bryan a great time to be an attacker in the Premier League, but there is also huge pressure that comes with those transfer fees, especially at up to read more from Pat Nevin in his Football Extra newsletter
The Guardian
12 minutes ago
- The Guardian
UK watchdog investigates eight years of Deloitte audits of mining firm Glencore
The accounting firm Deloitte is under investigation by the sector regulator over eight years of its audits into the FTSE 100 commodities and the mining company Glencore and a UK subsidiary. The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) said it was looking into whether Deloitte's audits of Glencore and its subsidiary Glencore Energy UK for the financial years ending 2013 to 2020 'gave sufficient consideration to the risk of non-compliance with laws and regulations'. Glencore was forced to pay £281m in fines, confiscated profits and costs as punishment in 2022 for charges of seven counts of bribery, in what at the time was the largest ever payment imposed on a company in a UK court. The court heard how Glencore employees and its agents had paid bribes worth $27m (£20m) to unnamed officials in Nigeria, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Equatorial Guinea and South Sudan. Glencore pleaded guilty to the bribery charges, which were brought by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO). Glencore employees flew cash bribes to Africa in private jets and used 'sham' documents to hide the true purposes of cash, the SFO told the court during the case. The investigation announced by the FRC on Wednesday will be conducted by the FRC's enforcement division. The regulator made the decision to open the investigation at a meeting of its conduct committee in March but did not announce it until now. The SFO began a sweeping investigation into Glencore in 2019 under the codename Operation Azoth. Last August it charged Glencore's billionaire former head of oil trading, Alex Beard, with conspiring to make corrupt payments to benefit the commodities company's oil operations in west Africa. Sign up to Business Today Get set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning after newsletter promotion Beard and five other Glencore executives are due to stand trial in London on bribery charges in 2027.
BBC News
12 minutes ago
- BBC News
Teenage Warwickshire council leader George Finch 'wanted to teach'
George Finch had planned to be at university studying to become a history at the of 19, he has become the youngest council leader in the UK, running Warwickshire County Council with a budget of £ Reform UK councillor still lives at his family home and cannot yet drive. Facts which have led to jibes in public and private from some opposition became the largest party on the previously Conservative-led authority with 23 seats in May's local elections. Speaking exclusively to the BBC, he hit back at criticism about his lack of life and professional experience – labelling those turning their noses up at his appointment as "ageist" and "not relevant".Sitting down in the leader's office, shortly after scraping through a leadership vote at the council's Shire Hall headquarters, Finch called out his said: "All I see is age… I don't care about my age. Would people be questioning if there was a 70-year-old at the helm? Probably not."Joe Biden, Donald Trump, presidents that are older – no-one questions it. But they're questioning someone who is 19." But leading a £2bn organisation is not a typical job for a 19-year-old, and Finch admitted he had had other plans."I wanted to be a history teacher. I loved history and I loved teaching but the problem was the curriculum, especially history. Universities and colleges are a conveyor belt for socialist wokeism."Finch said he had been inspired by Reform and former Conservative MP Lee Anderson, who has previously criticised educational establishments for what he perceives as teachers pushing "dog whistle divisive politics" on April, National Education Union members called for funds to be used to help campaign against Reform UK candidates. The organisation, Britain's biggest teaching union, branded Reform UK "a racist and far right" party. In his time as interim leader, Finch said he had used his new "influence" over education by calling Anjit Samra, CEO of Stowe Valley Multi-Academy Trust, to his office after a row over a union jack dress at Bilton School, in Rugby."I don't have the power to tell him what to do as he's an academy, but I do have that influence. "I asked him simple, I said 'I would like to see, and I think it's in your best interests, if you have a school assembly on the importance of British culture'."Asked what his friends made of his new job, he said: "They love it, when I have to go to the pub I don't have to buy a pint." But why did Reform appeal to him and why is it gaining momentum with some young people?"People can't afford homes, they can't have a car, postgraduate jobs are decreasing. It's getting harder for us to see a good future, a better future. And with Reform UK, that's what gives people that hope."He said he thought his appointment would probably help attract people to the party."It shows that anyone can do anything in this party, if you're up to the task. If you've got that merit-based system - and that's where we've gone wrong for far too long in the private and public sector."He added: "It's 'oh, here's a job because of your skin colour or your creed or your religion'. No, you get the job because you're good at it." A keen rugby player, Finch is used to battling on the pitch. But it was in the corridors of power where he faced his first public fight, in a row with the council's chief executive Monica Fogarty, after he asked for a Progress Pride Flag to be removed from outside Shire Hall in UK leader Nigel Farage even waded into the row calling out what he perceived as "obstructionism" by council officials saying "Warwickshire is a very, very good example".Asked if he could work with the council chief executive and other officers, Finch said: "We have done. We have to have that professional working relationship."Pushed on whether it was professional to publicly call out the council's chief executive, he said: "We're working together, the council is running. I think you're looking too deep into this." Talking about his priorities for Warwickshire over the coming months and years, Finch said having a sister with special educational needs and disabilities meant he had a keen interest in the area which has been labelled a financial threat to the future of the has pledged to cut wasteful spending and improve the efficiency of the councils it runs. But some of its spending decisions have faced criticism, while opponents say there has been little concrete action to reduce Warwickshire, opposition parties have criticised Finch and his party for planning to hire political assistants at a cost of up to £190,000 a year, saying the money should be spent on front-line services contentious area is the potential scrapping of lower-level councils as part of the Labour government's devolution said he wanted to look at these ideas in his county and he would like to see areas such as Nuneaton and Bedworth given their own town councils.
