The Pensions Review

The time is ripe for a comprehensive review of pensions policy

The reforms that Lord Turner’s Pensions Commission in 2005 recommended led to huge improvements in pensioners’ living standards. But it’s almost two decades since the commission reported. In the intervening years, the economic and policy environment has changed hugely, not least through the decline in defined benefit pension schemes, the rise in self-employed workers, increasingly constrained public finances, and the rising cost of the state pension.

The disbandment of the Commission left a gap in strategic oversight of the retirement saving system, creating the risk that the much-improved outcomes for pensioners we have seen in recent years could be fuelling complacency that future generations of pensioners will achieve similar outcomes. It is in this context that the IFS and the Trust launched the Review.

Steering group

We are guided by a highly qualified steering group: chair David Gauke (former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions), Baroness Jeannie Drake (former Pensions Commissioner and former President of the TUC), Sir David Norgrove (Chair of the abrdn Financial Fairness Trust and former Chair of the Pensions Regulator) and Joanne Segars (former CEO of the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association).

This senior steering group will provide high-level strategic advice on the direction of the Review and on the merits and drawbacks of policy options that emerge from our work, and assist with disseminating our findings and recommendations to policymakers and the pensions industry. The steering group was originally chaired by the late Alistair Darling, we are grateful for his leadership and contributions to the Review.

The Review will run from spring 2023 to autumn 2025