 Good morning, folks. Welcome. Welcome to a nice fresh ambience and fresh ambience We've got in this room and I can say something about having lots of hot air in the room before it was set in the big years The air conditioning is on full mass so apparently it will feel a bit nicer if you use it Can you be cool to open windows? We can't. The joy of modern sherd service office places that we can't go to So we'll wait for the air conditioning to do its bit Anyway, with that out of the way, I'm Gavin Kenny. I run the resolution foundation and thanks to all of you for coming. It's great to see so many of you here We almost think there's an election coming up or something. It's a level of interest. I think we may have people joining us in an over skilled room upstairs So if so, welcome to you too Today's event is today's workers tomorrow's retirement problem We've got a keynote speaker who everyone in this room will know. Steve Webb, potential minister, heave a dead voice on these issues We've got a fantastic panel of speakers and we've also got a great chair in Becky Barrow for some of the times The money editor, which means that my job is an easy one. I just have to say hello And I'm just going to give you a couple of points from me before I head over to the real textbooks The first thing I want to do is start with a positive. Sometimes because of the state of the economy and the state of the plight of the people that we worry about most The resolution foundation, we don't do that. I want to start with a positive because I know, I'm sure we're going to hear a bit about one of the main pensions policies that's been around which is also enrollment. And I very strongly think that it's a policy that's hardest in the right place that's going to benefit millions of working people in this country But it's also a policy that's been successfully rolled out on time, roughly speaking, to a sensible timetable It hasn't been overhired by the politicians who are leaving on it And it's basically been built out of consensus and a long-term process of policy development Now that set of remarks is not a set of remarks. I have to confess to Steve that I'll be making about most of the policies that come out of his department over the last five years But it is exactly, I think, an accurate description of how Steve has approached auto-enrollment, so all more credit to him for that It's an important thing that we recognise progress when we see it, and I think auto-enrollment is definitely progress We have worries about that particular policy in terms of some of the groups that it doesn't serve, as well as it possibly might So that we have various things that we want to talk and debate, and I'm sure that will come up today But it's a big advance. That's my first point My second point is that even with this progress, let's be clear-eyed about the daunting challenge that we will face In terms of people, particularly from low-mid-link households, saving for their pensions And I won't rattle through lots of statistics because most of the folks in this room probably know it But we have a massive challenge on our hands, even with a sensible policy framework that's being put in place We're about to do a report, for instance, on the pensions position of the UK's four and a half million or so self-employed workers To say it's bleak reading really doesn't get close to it. It's a horror story, to be honest And there are hours I could go to, and auto-enrollment isn't really designed to fix that problem So we have a lot of work to do, let's be clear about that And my third point, really, just to finish on, is a more political one, which is building on the last two We know, we're about to face it, we are already in a long election campaign We know that there will be a lot of chat about the position of pensioners, vis-a-vis other groups That's going to be one of the recurring themes of it, and it will be a recruit sort of debate I feel on that front I just hope, I really do hope and we'll do our best to try and make this happen That we have some proper focus on the plight of today's low paid workers in relation to their future retirement savings And their future retirement adequacy, because as I say, it's a big challenge in this country And not enough people are talking about it, it's high time that we have an honest, open political debate About how best to support today's low paid workers in terms of their future needs And with that, I will hand over to you, Becky, thank you Hello everybody, as Gavin said, I'm Becky Barrow I have recently joined some big times at the money section And I'm joined by a wonderful panel of experts Everybody knows Steve Webb, who is our longest-serving Pensions Minister For certainly as long as I can remember, I think the figures were 10 previous Pensions Ministers in the previous decade It's a great consistency to his job, which we are grateful Chris Curry, on my left, is from the Pensions Policy Institute A provider of fantastic research on pensions, which was a source of many, many excellent stories and will continue to be Graham Viddler recently joined the National Association of Pension Funds, formerly at NEST So one of the people who led the launch of NEST, where he worked for until March last year Nigel Stanley from the Trading in Congress, who is currently head of campaigns And a secret pensions expert, but not a secret if you read it at all So Steve's going to go first Gavin, Becky, thank you very much, good morning to all of you Thank you for spending a little bit of time in a very hot room to talk about pensions Actually, I was sitting upstairs getting ready and my phone went And I thought it was probably the departmental press office telling me to just stay on message In fact, I didn't bring the departmental press office that we've met this morning So, I mean that But actually, I got a text and I thought, oh that's great, it can be the family, my daughter asking for money or something Actually, it says, it's from 00710409 003 It says, if you have a frozen pension, prior to 55, you are now entitled to a free review It's called back and so on Should I do that? No, I'll do that Anyway, we were delighted, when I heard that today was sold out, I thought that was great And I'm grateful to the amount that you paid to take this show It's got a lot of commitments And I guess you're here because you want to know what the next department is going to do on pensions I suppose that kind of depends on my successor, whoever he, she, or I, maybe But I guess, I thought I'd give you a flavour of where I think we ought to be going on all of this So, I suppose my starting point is that pensions is the most gripping subject in government Now, you know that, because we need to hear otherwise But not everybody has quite got that Now, why is it so interesting? Because your pension outcome depends on every aspect of your life It depends on your life expectancy It depends on your level of education It depends on what sort of job you do, what your career path is, what sort of firm you work for It depends on whether you're single or married or divorced It depends on everything So everything affects pensions And that's what makes it so unendingly fascinating to me and I know it to you Is that to get pensions policy right, you can't just think about pensions You've got to think broadly But what do we do in government? Now, I'm going to invent a word here Now, just to explain, who doesn't play the words with friends? Yeah, I want to nod in with those of you who have spare time And I play Rigley with my wife and she invents seven letter words all the time So I'm going to invent a seven letter word here, which is silo eyes And I should be using it later on with words with friends We in government, we silo eyes We don't see people, we see policies So I do pensions But actually I don't I do bits of pensions So if you want to write to the government about pensions You want to write about state pensions, yeah That's nice Write about your workplace pension Well, that kind of depends Is it a trust-based workplace pension regulated by the pensions regulator? Yeah, absolutely Or is it a group personal pension under the office of the financial conduct authority? No, that's somebody else Or you're thinking about savings So that obviously depends to them, isn't it? Well, short-term savings is the treasury Financial inclusion is sort of us A bit of DWP, credit unions and so on But basically we're interested in doorstep lenders and so on You start to see how fragmented all of these things are It's like pension companies again, obviously And think about something else Think about your needs in retirement We focus on income needs Care needs And what about the overlap between the two? Because presumably you need resources in retirement to live off And you need resources in retirement to live off Care needs potentially Do we have an integrated financial product for care And for pensions yet? Not in any meaningful way Why not? Partly because we silo it See the point there So what do we do about that? We put it all in one place There might be cynics amongst you You might think this is a bit of a land grab But why don't we have, for example A department for pensions and the aging society So you could, as it were, take the P from the DWP You could deal with pensions But not just people think it's a pension You could deal with treasury pensions Sorry, I had something more to go after that No objection there But what about long-term care? What about long-term savings? What about doing all these things in one place And actually seeing the person, not the policy areas And what sort of things would that lead us to think about? It would lead us to think about what happens to you in retirement Based on that whole list of things I mentioned earlier That affect your outcomes So we would think about how the labour market affects What happens in retirement Gavin mentioned the position of self-employed I absolutely agree with that What I would call the new self-employed I think the old self-employed, broadly My pensions, my business type of thing Many of them do okay But the new self-employed Who in a previous year would have been employed We have a real problem with that One thing we have done Is we've changed the state pension system First So whereas you used to have a lousy basic state pension That even we don't think he's enough to live on And then an only related second bit That self-employed were indeed So the self-employed were only ever building up 113 quid a week And then hopefully something else We'd effectively be self-employed Into the second bit of the state pension By abolishing it So rather than have a first bit And then a second bit of the self-employed aren't in We just have a bit We just have a pension And the self-employed are fully members Of the windfall There aren't many quick edgy type windfalls In the new state pension But the self-employed are one of them And so they all get a windfall Gained for the new state pension They're relatively low levels Of plus two and less insurance Which they paid in the past Will buy them quite a worthwhile state pension Now this only gets them to the starting gate The starting right I don't have to retire them Seven or eight thousand pounds a year That's where it will get them to But it is a start It's the first time Actually a government's done something worthwhile For self-employed on pensions In living memory Now I remember Chris will probably remember better than me There was something called The Pensions Policy Group Or something like that I think that's what it's called Who did a report on On pensions and self-employed Over a decade ago And when I arrived in office in 2010 I kind of found it in that corner shelf Up there somewhere Because nobody's got many very good answers I mean you talk to the people Like the Federation Small Business and so on And they say, well The reason I'm self-employed or whatever Is I don't want the government I want all the things for myself I think that's the way I want to do things Because I said well Do you want to be part of Auto Enrollment or what It's like no, leave us alone But of course That might be a particular Sort of self-employed person But what do we do at the bottom So my question is If you had a department For pension day society Or something like that You could look holistically At labour market chains And what they mean You could look at social change And I think One of the elephants in the room Is divorce We had a go Ten or twelve years ago On pension sharing on divorce But we've got a problem with divorce As it were Which is to say We're moving to a state pension system That's deliberately based on the individual Where over time You won't get a pension Based on the person you're married to Record It's based on your own It's better But then it's your own And it stays with you And the problem with that Is if you think about The way that People's private pension income Is affected by their family life Any women Particularly Who perhaps have career breaks Or take time out to have kids And go back in Having to sort of Mistake that promotion Just end up Effectively through their family commitments And perhaps through caring in later life Damaging not their state pension Because that's now fully protected More or less But their private pension And if The couple stay together Into retirement Between them They're fine But what if they split up In their business And in theory We have pension sharing On divorce And pension splitting And pension credits And pension debts And all the rest of it But the reality I think Is it doesn't work Terribly well But your average To boss lawyer And so on Is focused on the house And all the rest of it But if you've still got kids At sea Are you really going to have Or hard over a share Of pension So I worry That In a world where the state pension Is only getting you to a basic minimum And where quality retirement Means having something else We haven't quite worked out How that works in a world Where we can't assume That people have a partner To depend on all the way through Even if they've had a partner When they're at work So I think That's an example Of where thinking about Social change As part of the ministry Of pensions And ageing society Would enable us to see The whole person And to see the different Bits of government In an integrated way What about the old elderly One of the good things About one of the many good things About the budget freedoms Is people at 55 And so on Can make decisions And we'll try and give them guidance To the pension wise service And that's great But what assumptions are we making About their ability to make Sophisticated financial decisions At 75 or 80 Because one of the issues here Is that If there are no defaults You make a choice initially And life goes by And at the point Where you've had talk To try and do something different Maybe you're not necessarily In a position to do that And I'm not saying everybody Of those ages is incapable Of making those decisions But some people will be So have we really thought through Financial capability In a world where people retire For 30 years And in a world where they have Freedom and choice is great But then what you do for people Who are not in a good position To exercise it at some point In their retirement And again We just think pensions And my colleague Norman Land Thinks about social care And the old elderly But actually shouldn't That be joined together A link to that We've got to get to the point Where we fix social care funding And it seems to me That if we can make Order enrollment work And make sure that people have Products for retirement We give them a decent high Of the retirement income Or wealth or some miniature Of the tomb It ought not to be beyond The width of man or woman To somehow bring Care funding into that There's lots of ways You could do it I have always thought That if I had a pension pot Of say 60 I would be willing to Hand over X thousand pounds To a provider So that when I say 80 If I need care They come in and cover it To the extent that this is A financial issue Of not having a family care And all the rest of it And that's not really Happening yet Now, partly that's not Happening yet Because the insurance industry Haven't wanted to face This long tail That's more than A repeat of absolutely Catastrophic care costs But the deal not cap Will stop It enables us to have A conversation It puts a limit On the exposure of the Insurance industry It's a very, very hard Chartered costs And means that you could Imagine insurance products Now, one of the problems Here is it's not Telling what you're insuring Because if you have Absolutely nothing You will get something From an estate But it will be Bare minimum It will be If you need residential Care It will probably be The cheapest residential Care in the authority It won't necessarily be Where you would want to be What is it What is it you are insuring Is it better quality Is it residential Care to Sorry, care in your home Don't necessarily care To enable you to stay In your home And I have been You know, in a sense This isn't the whole Counts of despair Because in this parliament We have tried To join these things You know, I have sat down With health ministers And the insurance industry Talked about these things I have sat down with Treasury ministers And talked about Things that overlap We've tried our best To overcome these silos But they haven't led To us getting to answers Where issues So completely Clearly overlap Between departments So what I would like to see Is the ability of government To see people And their later life And retirement And their care needs And the impacts Of social change And labor market And all of that Holistically in one place Now, when I floated This idea Occasionally People have said Well, the Treasury Will never let go Of tax relief There might be Some truth in that So I have a wheeze I have a wheeze on this Which is joint ministers Because at the moment If you think about it We have ministers Who do energy and business Or my colleague David Laws Is in education And cabinet office So I see no reason in principle Why someone in the ministry For pensions And the agency society Should actually Have a foot in the Treasury And frankly To function effectively Would need to have A foot in the Treasury To provide that bridge So I think it's I think it's doing Let me go on then To some of the other agenda Items for the next Parliament But I do think that's The kind of the big picture So we have a general election Nobody wins, don't they? Really? Parties have to work together Maybe, don't they? But whoever Whoever is the Pensions Minister In the new parliament Or Secretary of State For pensions And the agency society Yes, that's right Thank you We'll face Carrying on from Where we started So what sort of things Will they have to do? Well, one of the things I've learnt in my current role Is how long it takes To do stuff It's not a total revelation I know to those of you Who are seasoned white or watchers But it kind of A bit of shock to me And so if you think For example Excuse me a second If you think about The New State pension When I first arrived In the department I was given Something I know Then you happen Because you kind of arrive And then you think Well, what do I actually do? I'm here I'll keep an eye on things But what do I actually do? And I was given a list A list of kind of 20 ideas As I recall I wish I kept it Because it would be great That would probably be cool To track it down Before I throw it in And state pension reform Was on the list Just so you know Flat rate pensions are So I kind of looked down This menu without prices And thought Oh, yeah About state pension reform That's what I wanted Wanted in opposition That's what we're trying to do And that's why we've got New State pension Because it was on the list And because it's on the list It meant that So it thought about it And there was a sort of Certain element of momentum And so we worked on that But what did we do? We did a green paper With a single tier And a sort of dummy option Sorry, a consultation No, a consultation With New State pension And flat rate And that went through And then we had to have a white paper And then we had a draft bill And then we had a bill And then we had regs And it still won't happen Till 2016 And when I started They said to me Of course you can't do this Till 2020 Because the state pension age Is moving And you couldn't possibly Introduce a new state pension When you've got a moving State pension age Because it would create A normal, it's like Funny that there But you know The idea that you would Sit down and think And we'll do it in 2020 Is like, you know I know pension's a long-term Game But that's two complete Parliaments Before anybody gets it Even pushing it through Pretty quickly You've got 60 years From paying first But the point of all Of that's like Your rambling account Is I think The new pension's minister Needs to sit down Right at the start Of the parliament And get all the dirty Linen out All the forward agenda All the outstanding issues And try and build Some elements of Census, focus And so on And let me give you One example of where I think that's very important As Gavin said Automatic enrollment has been A triumph And many of you In the truth have been Part of that Getting over 5 million people You know There are not many policies Where you can point to Or you can say Over 5 million people The government has Put in place measures That have Unambiguously benefited them With 9% staying in It's going to be 10 million by the time We're finished And that's fantastic But the amount's Going in a tiny At the moment And we know that And that's But even when it's Fully rolled out We're only up to 8% And that's If you're earning 10,000 a year An 8,000-pound state pension And 8% contribution Keeps you going Where you work before If you're on 20,000, 25,000, 30,000 It doesn't Paytally doesn't And one of our Worries Is people will Retire Soon And so Hang on Mr Werner You sit pension You set the level Of my default Contributions I did everything With not enough money To live on in retirement Why didn't you Set those numbers In the right place So I think That the first thing That the next parliament Will have to address Is the 8 And I've said That unless And until we go To mandatory savings And having on Through all the agonies Of opt-tags And voluntary savings We've got 90% Staying in So we feel like The right point To force the investment So if we Get down the voluntary route I think we have To find ways That go with the grain Of volunteerism To get people up And for me The obvious way Is saying Automatic escalation Is to say You join a job at 8% And then unless You opt out Every time you Get a pay rise There will be pay Riders across you Every time you Get a pay rise A bit of that pay rise Goes into pension Until you reach Whatever level We think And you know You can Think about What that level Should be You could say It should be different From the workers Younger workers As soon as we can To realistic levels And of course That will take a long time To do You know You spend the first Six months of What it is Having this conversation You then do a formal Consultation Do lots of Modelling and number crunch And all the rest of it You then Draw up Trafford Legislation You bid for a slot In the Queen's speech Of Whichever year Would Have Nine months To get that Through Parliament You then do the Can't waste time And if the Spirit of Autonomous has been Largely consensual Then actually Let's carry on In that one So let's do that At the same time You've got So that Taxually Now people often say It's no way To enter Untactually To an autumn statement People are sitting By their Transistoradios Or the Equivalents And wondering If someone's Going to fiddle With taxually That doesn't feel Like a Well My view is That You know If I want to put A pound into my pension It costs me 60p Because the tax payer Is going to put 40p Attachable Inp Someone who works in My office Supposed to be 80p Because the tax payer Is going to give 20p Account It's a Standable So rather than Just going to Fiddle around The edges of Attachable Let's do it Proper So that We get very Just Retire On the standard rate It's actually It's even more hard To understand Why we do it the way we do So Chris And his colleagues at The PPI Just did that If you just Wanted to do a Revenue Neutral Cost-neutral Reform You could give Everyone a relief Of 30% That You've got A 40 And a 20 But the people Who are on 40 A Put A tweak On that Which is Salary Sacrifice People Their employer Actually I won't Put any money into My pension You put all of it in And that's A bit of pay That you Never get And that saves The employer Over If you Fix tax relief You probably Wouldn't Have those Kind of arrangements I suspect And that gives The government Extra money So it might be 33 And if it's 33 That would be quite Interesting, wouldn't it? Because you'd be I'd say to the public Who don't understand Tax relief And don't see it And aren't In sanctified To save by it For every two pounds You put in a pension The government Will put in one That might Because I don't Believe tax relief In sanctified To saving Other than The very rich At the moment But That might Actually have Some impact On the minister In the minister We'll take that one on I don't So Many thoughts Actually about We need to sort out Exactly how The new budget freedoms Will land Obviously will be In place for Very important things To start then But that's The start of the journey It's not The end of the journey So what does That new world Look like Once we see What people do In reaction What new products Do we need What new products Will the industry bring What would it be How would you Pick a charge cap What's the right charge For a drawdown product I mean Does not look the same So on day one You can But there might Come a time When it's pretty clear What are the main sorts of products How the market's working Where the market's working Where there's not Shopping around And all the rest of it You might Think about How you regulated If at all at that point And so again That's something That would have to be looked at There is So much more If you I should have said If you do report In the way I described One of the great simplifications Is you could Abolish the lifetime limit Because once people Are getting fair amounts Of in-year tax relief You don't need To keep 40 years of records To make sure they Don't fill their boots For their entire life And I get the sense That that would be A massive simplification And would be welcomed And actually I think Lifetime limits don't As a liberal Lifetime limits don't Work for me Because what they say Is not simply that You can't If you say Beyond this level You don't get anything To actually If you say Beyond this level Or your investments Grow beyond this level We will actually Penalise you We will actually Apply penal taxation And that's the same Not So getting rid of the Lifetime limit Would be a bonus And there are those Who say That lifetime limits Keep bosses out of Pension funds Because they've used Up their life to know If bosses Could be back In pension funds Because they've got A year's worth It could actually Be a very positive thing I think Given the temperature In a moment I'm going to stop Not least to Hear from my colleagues But particularly To hear from all of you There's a whole raft of Things we need to sort out In the next parliament In the In the pension sphere Keogh said It's not enough The implementation of the Charge gap The use of the pension The version of cleaners And the rest of this That's a fire alarm And But my central point Today Is that If you're going to see The whole person And not just a sign loan The current structure Of government doesn't work Doesn't work for all People Doesn't work for Tomorrow's older people You've got to bring All these things together Breakdowns And departmental barriers And then I think Some quite innovative And creative things Could be done So in the Unlikely event That I find myself In the same position After the major seventh I think it would be fair To say that My entry isn't quite empty Just to say Thank you very much Thanks We're going to speak For 25 minutes So not a很 Scripture But very unusually For a government minister And it's extremely Refreshing So now we're going Comp23 Should we start, Go around Because this take In this sauna Thank you very much I will speak Quickly for five minutes Then I hand Take my jacket After that And it will be slightly conductor It's always a blessing Can occur Following Steve is always interesting and engaging. I don't think anyone can make pensions as engaging, even to self-confess. And I think the technical term is pension anorax. So that says, always a pleasure to listen to and always slightly concerning, because it's probably covered off as much as I could possibly ever think of doing. Anyway, but there are a couple of things that I'd like to talk about. A brief today was to reflect on speech, bring out a couple of points, and then think about future policy options. First, each reflect on speech. So two things. One, I very, very rarely get to do this, but I'd like to actually correct something which Steve said. The report on the self-employed is actually by the pension provision group. No. The pension policy group. The pension provision group are very close to my heart. They were the organized agents that actually set up the pensions policy institute. So it was obviously a very good report. Also, I heard you say, I'm not sure whether you answered, it's something about taking the P out of DWP. And I thought that had been a treasurer of patience. But let's move on to some of the policy issues. Now, the thing that has struck me throughout this parliament, I think about what this is going to mean for the next five years or so, is actually even if Steve does get a wish, if there is this super minister set up across the department through some pension aging, if they suddenly find themselves in difficulty, say, for example, they can't get a majority for a vote in the House of Commons or something or the House of Laws is against them, and they can't actually do anything at all for the next five years, there's still going to be tremendous change coming through based on what's already gone through parliament. So if you just list kind of what I was trying to do, just of them down as Steve was talking about and what's been happening and what will happen. So we've got probably one of the biggest things, which is probably slightly undersold, but state pension reform coming in from April 2016 will have a massive impact, not just on the people who are part of the new system, but how the state pension system interacts with private pension, automatic enrollment, everything on top of that. Very fundamental for one of the very few ones I can think of that means kind of within 10 years, everything that went before that in the pension system will not apply to people coming up. We're very good at building layer upon layer of complexity. That's not there in this new state pension reform. So that coming in in April 2016 is going to be quite a big thing anyway for the people reaching state pension age after that term. There's also state pension age itself. We know that the first review of state pension age involving the government activities department and an independent reviewer or review group, it has to report by 2017. So there will be more announcements around what's going to happen to state pension age and the speed of which that's going to increase in the future. We talked about automatic enrollment. It's always very easy to forget we're still only halfway through into actually implementing automatic enrollment. And we still got by far the vast majority of employers in this country to go through the process, even though in terms of the number of individuals, we've covered probably more than half of them by now, in terms of employers, we've got a long way further to go. So there's still going to be a lot of action around that in terms of seeing how that goes with all employers, seeing if there's any potential need to help them in implementation and seeing what difference it has on the employees of those employees compared to the big scheme and what happens. And then we get re-enrollment and everything carries on again. So there's a lot going on in the workplace space as well, without even thinking about the governance charges, all these kind of technical issues which we tend to gloss over when we think about the big policy picture, which are very important in determining how much people have to live on. Then we get the bit, which is probably not quite within Steve's remit, but it's still very important, freedom of choice and the changes announced in the budget. Make them informatical this year, but I think what we'll see is that policy is not going to stand still all the way that policy affects individuals. It's not going to be the same at the start of the parliament as it is at the end of the parliament, mainly because the individuals coming through are going to be very different in five years' time from what's going through the process now. So again, that's something which is going to have to be kept under review, it's going to have to be monitored to see how it's working, what people are doing, how well people are understanding and coping with a system that's 10 and 15 years' time. Actually, the system is, and also for all that, there's still the possibility that there could be new types of pension schemes being set up in the next parliament when we have a pension bill going through at the moment, becomes a pensions act, the possibility of defined now-vision, collected to find a contribution scheme which might be set up during the next parliament, seeing how they work and how that goes further all the way through. So even if there's no new policy announcements at all, we're still doing for a very busy five years no matter what happens. I said that the area that I would pick up where there probably is likely to be is still in the same area that the 46th this year is at the contribution level, just seeing for a meeting and maybe a one in four chance of being happy with everything means that that's pretty more learnings. Now, we're seeing that's very much a start of a process and it's very... Very much, Chris. Congratulations on being the only person fighting the state that's doing this speech. And Graham's up next. Thank you, Becky, and good morning, everyone. I was going to focus my remarks on the challenges for the next pension minister, but having heard Steve earlier, I think it's kind of challenges for the next minister for everything. But the kind of situation is the same, really. Whoever he or she is who picks up that huge portfolio, come May or come June or come July, whether it's clear, will inherit a quite fantastic legacy in many ways, I think. They'll inherit a state pension which people can understand. How novel is that? They'll understand that they'll inherit a increase in the number of people saving for their own retirement, the likes of which we haven't seen for at least a generation. And they'll inherit in freedom of choice a rich potential to enable people to fund their retirement in a way which makes sense for them, not ways in which they're told to do, ways in which it makes sense for them. In doing that, though, I think they're going to face fairly quickly two pretty meaty challenges, which both Steve and Chris were already alluded to, really. The first is the question of whether all of those people who are saving, and many of them saving for the first time, whether they're saving enough, and the second one is whether, when those people come to retirement, they're spending in ways which make sense, not sense to politicians necessarily, but sense to those people themselves and whether actually freedom of choice has its potential realized, because as Chris said, what we see in April this year will be very, very different, I hope, to what we'll see throughout the course of next parliament in terms of the opportunities that are open to people. And the important thing about those challenges, I think, is they're critic- they're linked, they're inextricably linked, because I think the solution to getting people to save more, as to some extent, we are going to need to do, is almost certain to lie in the relationship between employers and workers. In fact, just about every successful private pension initiative that's been undertaken in this country has taken place in that relationship between workers and employers. It's why automatic enrollment works, because both parties buy into the consensus, it goes with the grain. And I think both of those groups, workers and employers will be looking at the rollout of freedom of choice and looking at how people actually use their pensioning for the future. The more successful freedom of choice is, the more people make decisions that are right for them and enable them to have the income and wealth balance throughout their retirement that's right for them. The more both workers and their employers are likely to say, yeah, we should think about contributing a lot, whether that's through auto-escalation or some others. And all of that, of course, makes me a big advocate for the type of joint policymaking that clearly you'll get in an industry for everything. That's what it's all about. You can take the labor market, you can take pensions, you can take savings, you can take tax relief and care into consideration in this new department. I think that we also need something else. We also need an independent voice and an independent view, which helps that minister make the many, many decisions which he or he will have to make. That's why the NAPF is calling for a retirement savings commission to guide the work of the next pensions minister or minister for everything. To make sure that pensions policy is built for the long term, not the parliamentary term, and that it takes into account the needs of savers across the board and that policy is built on evidence, understanding and independence. The good news I think about that type of approach to policymaking is there's plenty of precedents for it. So for example, the last time we met the new pensions minister back in 2010, I think one of the first things he did was to introduce an independent review to understand how to make automatic enrollment work. The quality of that review group's report is one of the things that is fundamental to the successful rollout of automatic enrollment that we've seen over the last five years. I think we need more of that independent input and insight in the next parliament. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Nigel. The last one on our list, the one we've all been most supportive of. Oh, well, what can you do, I'll have to say. One of the great things about the British Constitution is it's not written down, it evolves. I think I've come to the conclusion that we now have a new bit of the British Constitution that just says that Steve Webb will be pensions minister. So whatever happens after the election, I honestly think that kind of will go to Caxon House and look if there's still a beat there. And that would be a bad thing. It's all from a TUC point of view. I mean, I think it's become to election. It is worth paying tribute to Steve that he has bought that kind of degree of consistency and innovation and consensus building to the work that he's done there. And I think that's great. And I think that follows on from a pattern that I've developed before. I mean, I think one of the, it is the implementation of automatic enrollment by this government is great success, but it was building on what went before. It was building on the work of the pensions commission, which is one of the most skillful bits of public policymaking, I think. Not only were they experts, but they were very practical people who worked out what was possible. It was kind of, here is a solution which both works and has a degree of real politics to it that will mean it can survive different governments. The right got something, the left got something, employers got something, workers got something. They have that degree of consensus for it. And I think that's great. And I think one of the advantages of Steve's proposal, if we had a minister for everything, that we might have avoided a break with that in the budget, where out of nowhere there came a non-consensus building not thought through no stakeholder engagement to the decumulation process. I think that the kind of key starting point for the work of the pensions commission was that relying on individual self-reliance was not working. People were not saving, they were not making, they were not running the right internal discount rate to work out how much they should save for that, because I think that people on the whole are very good at internal discount rates. And secondly, there was market failure. The market was simply not interested in the great majority of workers who didn't earn very much money. And yet the whole freedom of choice agenda, I heard the chance to say this, is based on the idea of market innovation and individual self-reliance. And I think that that is a recipe for it not working. Now, I think there are ways through that, and I think there seems to be an almost growing consensus which may or may not include the Treasury now, but we need to revisit some of the approaches of the pensions commission to look at how we use defaults, how we look at inertia, how we build institutions to ensure that employees get a good deal. And I am very worried that the kind of people that will end up with modest pots will not have the right kind of processes or products or institutions that will look after their savings when they come to de-cumulate them. But I very much agree with Steve that we need to make those pots bigger in the first place. And I welcome very much what he had to say about auto-escalation including contributions. Although I did find a mistake in what he said there as well, I don't think it's right to talk about 8% contributions because I think that underplays the role of the band of earnings. You only get contributions. I'm actually going to know the lower earnings there which I completely forgot, but I can still think of it as a bit above 5,000. It's gone up. And again, the trigger that gets you into auto-enrollment which has gone up, I think, far too high as it's been linked to the personal income tax alliance, whether you think that's a good policy or not. I think it's a bad policy that the auto-enrollment trigger has gone up because every time it goes up, more and more part-time women workers don't get to start saving in a pension scheme. And I think that's a mistake. And I think also there are other changes in the labour market as well which the Pensions Commission could not have foreseen, which I think we've talked about self-employment, but we've also got the growth of people with multiple jobs. And I remember spending a long time talking to officials about what do you do with people with multiple jobs that their income taken together would trigger contributions, but because they're in different jobs. And in the NLA persuaded me it was in the too difficult box and it simply wasn't possible to do anything without starting from scratch and it was too late from that and you'd have to use HMRC data in ways that no one wanted HMRC data to be used although the HMRC don't seem to be very good at anything very much at the moment. So that's actually a good decision. But I think there is something there that we need to do. So I think in terms of the accumulation phase, what we need to do is to increase contributions but we also need to start more people contributing. I'm increasingly attracted by the idea of getting at least employers to contribute from the first pound of earnings in every job. You could even reduce the percentage to start off with so it wasn't a huge step change in the total amount for that. Because I think that covers an awful lot of the problems. Having said that, I think that there is still a huge amount to do. I agree very much with Graham about having more independent and I'd very much like to see a new pensioner's commission to look at de-cumulation and get that right. Thanks. So we have 32 minutes of questions and I imagine that everybody's got one. But I have the right to ask the first question of the chair and I'm interested to know in this room, does everybody know what their state pension age will be when they get to that moment? Do you think all your friends and family now? Because I find it very worrying how many of our readers at this time are not clear when they're going to retire. And I question that the GOV.UK website is as clear as it could be on the subject. Anyway, I'm glad you all know. So first question goes to Louise Eccles from The Doney Mouth. Thank you. And Steve, even the Pensions Minister can be targeted by fraudsters by a text message. And how concerning is it that there will be a flood of these kind of scams in the leader or off the back of the pension? Yeah, sure. Do you want to do one more time or do you want to respond immediately? Yeah, yeah, I entirely agree. You know, people are going to have access to an awful lot of cash. And wherever there is cash, there are crooks. And funny enough, our sense of this is that they're not pensions crooks. They're just crooks, you know, and they just happen to have a lighted here. And as we see them off here, they'll go somewhere else. So it's a big issue. There's a huge amount going on, and it's one of these frustrating ones where, you know, there's more going on than we're able to say, obviously, because we don't want the bad guys to know what we're up to. But but by awareness is really very important. So the pension wise website is on the front, being aware of scams, the so, for example, everybody who's registered on the website already is getting an email telling them about about the website. And it specifically says and how to avoid scams. So I think you colleagues in the media have a huge role to play. You know, of course, we will do what we can to drive out the crooks and to spot them and to act and so on. But you will never be always ahead of the game. And we need everybody to realise that there are an awful lot of people out there who want to take your money and not do very good things with it. Is anybody else in the panel responsible to raise this question? I think there's I think there's an issue that there's kind of there's two ways of kind of looking people being ripped off. There's one kind of illegal ways of looking off. And I think that's right. But I'm also worried that people being ripped off perfectly legally by products which are perfectly legal, but of such poor value and so inappropriate to them. But they won't they will just do very badly from them. I think that's the downside of freedom and choice. And people are free to make mistakes. I know that making catastrophic errors affecting for the rest of your life strikes me as a dangerous bit of public policy making. Also, Steve, the pension-wise web search, I know it's not sadly your responsibility, but will it have a tax calculator on it so people can actually understand how much tax they'll pay if they withdraw? I mean, it explains the tax implications of what you're doing quite explicitly, there's big sort of exclamation marks and think about the tax, think about the tax. So whilst it obviously can't take account of everyone's complete circumstances and do their income tax returns for them, the tax implications of what you do is a big feature of the site. Len? Yes, good morning. My name is Lynne Burnham from Mothers at Home Matters. How do you propose to safeguard those mothers and more and more in fact, indeed now, our fathers who take time out of their careers to care for their family and extended family indeed, because we're talking about the sandwich generation here, because many of these parents will have been in a household where the breadwinner earns more than £60,000 and therefore does not qualify for child benefit anymore. He is the one you get your national insurance insurance contributions paid until your youngest child is 12. So how are we going to guarantee that those carers, be it mum or dad, continues to get their contributions paid because a lot of new mothers and fathers are coming into the system. I know this from our membership. They're not actually registering. It's like, oh, well, I can't qualify for child benefit. I'm not going to register. You've got a huge issue coming up. Now, it's an important point and it's one I've looked into. So for people who are already in the child benefit system and who then the high earning rule comes in, as long as they have an underlying entitlement to child benefit, even if they're not getting a penny in payment, still get the credits. So you don't have to receive any child benefit to get the credits. So the people who are already in the system are pretty much OK, as far as we can see. You raise an important point about the, for instance, the woman with the well off husband who has her first child, the bounty pack that new moms get should have information about this. And I've been asking HMRC for data on the number of women get the number of people getting this protection, and it hasn't fallen. So I looked for the date when the thing changed and did it fall off a cliff and it hasn't. But I agree, we have to be vigilant because it is an entitlement. Even if your husband's rich, you don't actually get a penny of child benefit. Can I just stop it? We're not rich and 60,000 pounds or richer. No, because if you've got two people earning 30,000 pounds, doubling income families, bringing in 60,000, you will still qualify for each other. So what this government, what this country has done has been detrimental to the one other family. So please don't call us rich, we're not rich. Well, relative to most people, 60,000 is rich. Thank you very much, Steve. Sorry, Anglican to the Intergenerational Foundation. Thank you very much, Steve, with extremely entertaining speech and very informative. Of course, we welcome the auto-enrollment moves, as everyone in this room does, and the improvements in state pension, particularly for poor people. But we worry, as you know, about intergenerational fairness and whether you're being really fair on the younger and future generations, in particular, two questions. One, the unfunded pension liability. I don't think you really monitor it well enough. Perhaps you'd like to give us a view on what it is. The last figure that I saw, and it was very little done on it, was 3.8 trillion. And I think that's an understatement for a couple of technical reasons and life expectancies. And I think that's really important for the younger generation, but that is monitored probably more so than the debt, which is about a quarter of that, which is the official government debt. And secondly, I'd like to ask you about this early release of funds. I guess, do you know what, I should have raised a one question. Very quick question, thank you. It has to be very quick. Would you have allowed the early release of funds, which was announced in the walking statement, personally, 3.55 to get hold of your pension fund? Are you talking about the budget, James? Yes, I'm sorry. OK. The internet generational aspects of what's been going on lately, as you will appreciate, are much more subtle than people think. So people say, you know, old people, the only people who vote, you shoveled money at the grey vote, it's terrible. And then you stand in front of a group of pensioners who are deeply aggrieved and feel that we've let them down. Now, how do you reconcile those two? Well, part of it is if you think about the big focus for income tax cuts in this parliament, getting a tax loan from 6,500 to 10,000, something that Lib Dems have pushed for, that in the leaders' debates in 2010, David Cameron looked mockingly at Nick Clegan and said, don't you see anything, you couldn't possibly do it, has cost a shed load of cash, and all of that cash has gone to the work of the age, whereas pensioners have had their tax loans frozen. Likewise, the interest rate policy, the lowest interest rates in living memory over the long period, who does benefit working-age borrowers? Who does it hit, retired savers? So whilst there are other things we've obviously done for pensioners, the triple lock and all the rest of it, in terms of this generation, it's much more subtle and mixed, I think. You raise perfectly fair point, the unfunded liabilities will have to be paid by the next generation and beyond. That's one of the reasons why we've linked state pensioners to longevity, so that instead of keeping the pension age where it is and saying to tomorrow's workers, you've just got to pay Sky High Taxes to pay for the retired population, we're going to have a process that says two thirds of your adult life in work, one third in retirement, give or take, and that tries to keep the burden on whichever working-age population we're talking about, sustainable. Would I have allowed the budget changes? I mean, I helped to write some of them, so yes. Question from the Dutchman there. Thank you. Francis Kage, I'm putting step change to debt charity. Just to build on the point about seeing the whole person. A lot of people have liabilities as well as assets. So two immediate joined up government challenges and one longer term one, if I may. The two immediate ones were five different ministries not responsible for personal debt. I somehow doubt that the insolvency service would be, as we speak, dismantling some of the protections for pension assets and personal insolvency. And secondly, the question of people retiring with debts, be they mortgage debts or whatever, is an immediate, not a longer term challenge for the pension guidance system, which it seems ill-prepared to handle. And the longer term challenge is debt prevention. So just to add it to the list for auto-enrollment, how about having a system where the first so many pounds of accumulated asset is in a rainy day liquid savings pot to preserve people from the short-term income knocks that they've got debts when they retire? Thank you. Question for Steve, could the next person ask somebody other than some of the others? Yes, just briefly, Francis, all very sensible points. I think, as you say, we do have fragmentation. So the DWP is actually doing quite good stuff. I'm credit units, for example. And I think I saw a figure of a million more over the number of people in credit units. It's got to be a good thing. But it tends to be a bit on the edges of what the department does, although all the universal credit stuff and budgeting and all of that is trying to be more holistic about all of that. But I agree, doing it in one place would make a lot of sense. People retiring with debts, indeed, I mean, we have an issue that growing numbers of people on pension credit have a mortgage. And probably a mortgage they will never pay off. So whereas in the past, paying all these interests on benefit was a sort of tempting thing while you'd lost your job, this could now run for decades. And there's a bit of an issue for us, for the taxpayer, about that. The budget freedoms to a point could help. I think some people will say, actually, that bit of capital is not going to make a life-changing difference if I turn it into income, but will clear my debts. And then it's financial advice. And I think that will actually be a godsend for some people. That will really be what they want to do. And given the interest rates they might be paying, it might be a far better return than other things they could do. So I think that may help a bit. But as you say, ultimately, trying to prevent it in the first place, a bit nervous of kind of carving up auto-enrollment. I mean, because it works so well as a structure, there's a queue outside my door if you want to do things with it. So I've noted that one. Now, we haven't had many questions from the back, so I'm going to take the gentleman standing up there, please. Philip Rush from the world. What's interesting, those of us around future things that are going to come to the next day in the program? But there's not always a consensus around the reforms. And if it is, then why absolutely not yourself? Which of the reformers are you all concerned about that might get rolled back or re-reformed in an happiness way? State not allowed to answer that question. Question, we can ask Steve again. But I mean, as I was saying, I think when I was speaking earlier, one of the issues is that Steve alluded to as well. It takes a long time for pension reforms, even when they're on the books to actually start to come in and input an impact on people's lives. And we've seen that over the years. I mean, I think even in the short lifetime of the Pensions Policy Institute, there's been seven or eight different state pension reforms happening, which means that the rules change every year. We had some sort of a very strange situation where first you had to have 39 qualifying years, and it went down to 30. Now it's going back into 35 all over a six-year period for qualifications, so it's really difficult for people to understand. I'm not sure, given that there is still a consensus around most of the policies which have been introduced in this coalition government, in the state pension age increasing, automatic enrollment. I think there are some concerns about automatic enrollment. I know that in the past, there's been some talk about whether or not the very small employers should be part of automatic enrollment or whether they should be exempt because it's too difficult for them to do as a business. There's been much less talk of that recently, but I guess the way in which the staging is working means there's still a potential for something like that for automatic enrollment to be changed before it gets rolled out all the way through there. I hope that we could try and guard against that to at least get everybody in before we start talking about changes to it. The area where there's been least agreement, I think, is on the budget changes and freedom of choice. Although I think to borrow an analogy from a colleague of mine, it's a bit like a tube of toothpaste. Now you've squeezed all the toothpaste out. It's very, very difficult to get it back in the tube. So I can't see there being much scope for there being reform in the short term to try and undo some of those changes. That's not to say the policy won't evolve over time and there might be different things added. And if you look internationally, it's very interesting to see the direction of policy in many other countries where they have, for example, very little in the way of use of annuities and longevity insurance are now starting to think about how they can use behavioral theory to get people to do more of that, whereas we've just moved completely the opposite direction. So there's policy there, but I can't see there's much prospect of many of the big strands actually being reversed in the next parliament. Thank you. Another question from the back, gentlemen. Thank you. I'll try and bring in Graven and Nigel, if I may. John had made a keynote speech yesterday and one of the things he said was he had a concern that pension freedom and choice might have distracted this from what is the core need of a pension that is to generate an incomplete retirement. And confidence was looking at what's going to happen 10 or 20 years out. I was wondering whether Graven and Nigel had any concerns that would have been a little bit fixated about capital values, asset volatility and less actually about the pension which is what he said originally designed for. Yeah, great question. Thank you. I think it has distracted us. It's distracted the sort of people who get together in the evening and talk about these sort of issues. I'm not so sure that it's distracted the actual people who've been seeking to get their money off. So when we do research with the baby boomers who are coming up to this kind of decision point, around about 80% of them tell us the most important thing for them is a regular guaranteed income stream. They want that longevity section. They want that certainty. And so picking up on some of the points that Chris was making about the evolution of freedom and choice into the next parliament, I think it's really important that government and industry work together in a way which frankly they haven't done over the last year to make sure that solutions are being developed which capture that fundamental desire for an income that lasts through retirement but also adds on some of the benefits that I think are available from freedom and choice like a bit more flexibility perhaps early in the retirement perhaps a bit more choice about how long and when you get money invested for. But I think the distraction that you mentioned is real but it's confined to largely to a group of people who talk about pensions rather than people who actually have them. I'm not sure I'm as confident as that. I think the budget reforms the great danger is that they throw out the risk sharing baby with the annuity market failure bar for water. It's the same right now, isn't it? Although I absolutely take the team pregnant if you can't put it back in. I mean, if you ask people what they want at the moment they say they want an index-linked annuity. Do they buy an index-linked annuity? No, they don't. So I'm not sure that asking people what they want is a successful predictor of the way that they will navigate their way through this incredibly scary multiple choice world where they will have to be getting all kinds of conflicting messages about what they should be doing. I think that that is why we need to think about how do we build defaults into the retirement process? And I think that has to be around at least longevity sharing, not necessarily traditional annuities with guarantees because guarantees are expensive. I think there are better risk sharing ways of providing some predictability about income. But you also have to deal with the real difficulties as well that there's an awful lot of people who simply don't have enough money for many of the traditional for profit providers to be that interested in. And I think you're going to need something that is even nest or looks a lot like nest to run the accumulation for low to medium as well. And that is a gaping gap in the approach of time at landscape. Mr. William? I think the side of this, the link it's from the forms it's starting. I think the side of the solution... That's another new word, thank you. ...a new one on me. Because of course, if you put that group of structures together, then you siloise against another set of structures. And I'm quite interested in are there bigger solutions to this that are outside the pensions box? And one I think I would count on you to look at is considering the length of the working week. We used to have a six-day working week. We now have a five-day working week. And for the society that we live in now, a four-day working week might become better, particularly if we could stick with the same salary for four as we do for five. But we have all sorts of benefits, particularly making it feel more like working for longer and making that a reasonable thing to do over a working life. But actually, to deal with the siloisation issue, I think the most important thing, and I'm not sure I'm here about it, is what vision are we all heading for? Because if all of the government departments share a common vision, then we're much more likely to get them all to act in line with it. And then just one very quick thing, if I may, a small thing to you, a big thing to lots of people, women particularly in their 50s have found their retirement age changed rapidly with very little notice. Some of them have had only 18 months' notice or so of it. And this is really causing problems. And we're being... For the society is being hugely lobbied to ask you to make some changes to that, to stay at this advantage in that particular group of women who've got no chance of getting themselves into a state where they're going to have enough to live on. Very good point. Can I say to that stage? Yes, sure. I certainly agree that the labour market is key. I can't see us getting firms to pay people for four days' work, what they pay them for five. But I do think that flexible workings be set forward. So, for example, we've abolished the default retirement age, so you can't be forced out just for turning an age. We've given everybody a legal right to request flexible working. Although people say I was only right to request, actually, four out of five requests for flexible working are granted. So, actually, most people who ask flexible work can get it. And the bit that I miss out upon, I said, really, and again, tends to be a bit of a Cinderella bit of our department, but it's vital, is the fuller working lives issue. Because how are you going to square all this if people aren't saving enough and we don't want them to be poor in retirement, working for longer, but not necessarily doing five days a week heavy manual work till you're 75, you know? There is a rethinking later working life and Ros Altman, who's our business champion for all the work, is doing a correct job on that. So that's part of the, again, back to my theory of everything, part of the pension's mix is sorting out the labour market in later life. I knew a specific issue about women's state pension age. So I would accept that women born in 54 have had a very substantial increase in their state pension age, most of which legislated for 20 years ago and they didn't know, weren't told. So, you know, 95 pension acts takes a woman who is born in 54 and makes her state pension age 64 as near as damn it. And because she was 40 odd at the time, she wasn't reading articles about pensions, the government at the time didn't tell her. So she gets to 60 or something, expects to get a state pension, and it turns out that her state pension age had already gone up by four years and nobody told her. We've added a maximum of 18 months, now 18 months is 18 months, but every woman whose state pension age we have increased qualifies for the new single tier pension, every woman. And those women, on average, gain an extra nine pound a week in their pension for the rest of their retirement. So on average, that 18 months they've lost is more than offset for most of them, not all of them, most of them by the better state pension for women. So, you know, has it been quicker than I would have liked? Yes, it has. Should we have done, should previous governments particularly have done more? Because we wrote to everybody, the reason I get the flat is I told them. If you'd been in power, would you have not let the state pension age from age at 60 for women for as long as it did? I would, because what they did was they legislated, you know, 95, but they didn't start changing till 2010. Now, that's the flip side, isn't it? You give people 15 years notice, which sounds great. But then of course you've got the fiscal pressure that's not resolved for another 10 years after that, which was a quarter of a century after the legislation has passed. So should it have started a bit sooner, yeah, a problem. I've voiced on a man's job and man's terms on a man's pay, but I think the point has been missed around here. Retirement is only unemployment by any other name. And I hate that big bloody minute of being unemployment, particularly as that's maybe done, I scratched around with other sorts of bits of jobs and, you know, running my own company looking, I can't expand because of the EU regulations, congestion charge and flexible working. No, my men do, we work 24-7 depending on what you're doing. But the problem I want to hope for us all is we can do it. I expect a six-figure sum now on my back rail. People don't, there aren't- Can you just move to a question? The question is on that, but there are professions like lap dancers and some of the unprofessional footballers who expect to change during their lives. I would say you ought to start at 75 and to make that the sort of basic norm for all pensions and link with that. But, again, no wish there would be made into retirement. And I think priority for jobs ought to go to the skills we already have in this country. Thank you very much. Anybody want to question? The lady there. Yeah. Do you think people will be encouraged to save more if the pension system is more transparent and savers have greater rights to know how their money is being invested? Does it work here? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, as I think you know, the NAPF research that we did last year into sustainability responsible investing showed that there was a huge amount of latent appetite among younger people in particular. Find out more about where their money is invested. And I think the important thing is it's latent and nobody yet has found a way of tapping into it and kind of engaging people, let alone building on that engagement to encourage people to save more. I think part of the key to that might be the language we use to describe some of this sort of stuff. So, you know, I was at an event at the NAPF yesterday where there were lots of people talking about ESG, there were lots of people talking about responsible investment and UMPI and all this sort of thing. I think if we were to communicate in a way which talks about long-term growth or sustainable growth, which is what we're really trying to get at work through effective stewardship of companies, that might be an effective basis on which to get people in certain environments that people are willing to listen. I think the answer to your question is no. Because I think what we know is what gets people saving is inertia. If you're asking me, should pension funds invest responsibility? Should they be transparent? Then the answer is yes. But if you look at the numbers of people in NEST who are choosing the ethical option, which is very well researched, a lot of research done by NEST to find out exactly what the ethical beliefs of NEST members are likely to be, it's chosen by quite a small proportion. So I think what we shouldn't do is try and piggyback one issue on another. Pension funds should invest responsibility and be transparent because they should invest responsibility and be transparent. We shouldn't hook it onto increasing saving. We should increase saving in other ways. Otherwise, we end up getting two things mixed up and doing neither of them properly. So that's probably a bit controversial with some of my constituency, but I think that varies strongly. But that doesn't mean for one minute I don't think pension funds should invest responsibility, be proper owners of the funds with the responsibilities that go with that and be entirely open and transparent about what they're doing with them. Are there any questions at the back that I cannot see? So we'll come to the front of the check sheet, please. Thank you. John Bryant, former DEM chair of the Camden Pension Fund. And I've got a question for all panel, except Steve. So they would be able to have a go. So it's a political question, really. If Steve's idea of the Secretary of State for Pensions, Universe and Everything came about, surely that new ministry should be looking at not just pension's incomes, but actually the benefits which pensioners get, like their travel concessions, for example, and their TV licenses and all the things which cost them less when they're a pensioner, shouldn't that be part of the equation about looking at the whole person as a pensioner rather than simply only us concerned as to what kind of incomes can we get out of the system? It's also the benefits which are in the child, which are rather controlled by the child to his checker rather than the pensioner's minister, are obviously giveaways to make sure that the pensioners go out and vote. So would you like to see some of those benefits removed? I think the principle of... I'll make sure the other benefits are improved for people on low-income. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pass, pass. What's your answer? Anything else? I think one of my make-and-touches, actually, is if there was a minister for everything, we'd have to change our name, because the pensioners put us in a suit, we wouldn't cut it anyway. I think, I mean, it's a valid point. I mean, and I guess it comes back to some of the things which Graeme was touching on either about the kind of politicisation and short-termism of policy. Now, I think actually we have seen slightly less of that recently because we've had this big consensual approach around most of the big changes that have been made. It's happened in a thought-out way. The areas that are different are, as you say, some of the smaller benefits, which really, I think... I mean, I guess there's been a history of going back back to the 1970s with Christmas bonuses and age additions, but it really, I guess, towards the end of the 1990s, early 2000s, started to come in as a short-term way of being able to direct expender to two particular groups, but not in a way that's going to commit you to spend that much money every year. Now, interestingly, having been in this area for a long time, too long, probably, when they first came in, there wasn't really a great deal of popular support for them. There was a big campaign when free TV licences and bus passing committees said, why don't you just put it all on the basic state pension? Or winter fuel payment? We want it to come to the same amount of space through the year every week so we get to choose what we spend it on. I think this situation has changed because these have been there for so long. People now get used to them and expect them, and once people are expecting them and use them, it's very hard to take them away. So it is now, as you say, a very political discussion as to whether people should still get these benefits or not. I think the important thing for anybody thinking about what to do in the future is to make sure that all of these benefits are taken into account and that everything is looked at in total and then think about the best way to get that sum of money to a particular group and the best group she wants to be targeting to do that. Unfortunately, I don't think I can ask the question as to how to do that, but I think that's the kind of process you need to go through. Anybody else have any? I'm certainly not taking the bus pass away. I was doing some focus groups in Hartfordshire last year talking about retirement income in the round. I tried to get people talking about state pension, the value of the state pension, the approximate capital value of about a quarter million quid. Yeah, we could have a way up the stream of income. Nobody was interested. Talk to people about their freedom pass and the people in London who had one pass and the people who lived in Hartfordshire who had a different type of pass, we could have kept going or not. And as Chris said, these things are tangible. They're intrinsic. They have values for people, so it is very, very carefully. But we do need to take the minister of account when we're thinking about adequacy and we're thinking about income in retirement because they're all part of the literature. Well, I think you could just as much argue that the pensioners bus pass up to move to the ministry of transport because it seems to be as much a substitute for the transport industry as it is for pensioners. Because pensioners simply wouldn't make as many journeys if they didn't have a free pass. So I think I'm very much in favour of the Boris Johnson pass because I get mine in a few months. It's a recently attractive public policy option. I mean, I think the serious answer to your question is that actually a lot of these things are about spending money and therefore the idea we have a separate minister that can take decisions separate from the Treasury is not going to happen. And I think one of the problems with some of these policies is they do feed what I think is a developing and largely role myth about intergenerational issues. But I think one I would single out at the moment is pension and bonds. I do not know understand why the British government is borrowing money from rich pensioners at a more expensive rate probably than the Greek government borrowed from the international bond market. I just think it is so clearly has pre-election bribed written all over it. The first part of it is just extraordinary. And now post-election. And we'll later get rid of it. I mean, it's kind of it makes you kind of weak, doesn't it? I mean to keep them on sale until a week after the election. Yes, quite, quite. So that makes me really sad. So we still have a view on. But I love the bus pass. Right, it's 11 o'clock. I might faint if I don't leave this room too quickly. So thank you very much for coming. I think it's been really interesting and I hope you've enjoyed it. Thank you to Nigel. Thank you to Graham. Thank you to Chris. And thank you to Stephen. Thank you all for coming.