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CBI hails pensions blueprint: but ministers have been criticised for ignoring key issues.

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
AuthorParry, Charlotte
PositionPensions Green Paper

The pensions green paper has received a mixed response from employer bodies and pensions experts. Although the CBI welcomed the government's plans for simplifying the system, Mercer Human Resource Consulting complained that the document failed to commit to the necessary urgent action.

The proposals include cutting the red tape governing occupational schemes, simplifying the pensions tax system, increasing the retirement age for public-sector employees to 65 and establishing a pensions commission.

The government believes that its proposed reforms would save employers around 200 million [pounds sterling] a year in administration costs and make it easier to set up and run good schemes. But actuarial firm Barnett Waddingham argues that they would do nothing to encourage employers to run final-salary occupational pension schemes.

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development supported the paper's voluntarist approach, arguing that any proposals to force employers to provide occupational schemes would be inflexible and fail to suit the needs of employees and organisations in a market where people rarely stay with one employer for life.

John Cridland, the CBI's deputy director-general, also welcomed the lack of compulsion. "Mandatory provision could have cost business 29 billion [pounds sterling] a year, threatening the viability of many firms," he said, adding that the new tax incentives and the reduction in...

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