Monday 27 November 2017

Back to the Future: The outlook for retirement 15 years on from the Pensions Commission

In the autumn of 2002, Chancellor Gordon Brown announced a Pensions Commission to explore the outlook for pensioner incomes if the system continued unaltered and to make recommendations for improving that outlook.

15 years on, its recommendations – including auto-enrolment into low cost pensions and a more generous but delayed state pension – have become central features of our pension landscape. But new challenges have also emerged, including ones of generational fairness.

But where does that leave our retirement living standards? Which generations benefit most? Where do gaps remain for policy shifts to make our pensions system fit to deliver adequate incomes for current and future pensioners in 21st Britain?

Fifteen years on the Resolution Foundation reconvened the three members of the Pensions Commission – Lord Turner, Baroness Drake and Professor John Hills – to consider the current challenges Britain faces and what further reforms may be needed for the UK pensions system. The Foundation also published a major new analysis on the outlook for pensioner living standards over the coming decades.