Attitudes to change…
A busy day yesterday, not only for me but also for the DWP printers, as we published four separate documents, exploring attitudes and opinions to saving and our personal accounts proposals.
I started the day at the London School of Economics for a lively discussion on the findings from one of them - looking at young people’s attitudes to saving - with a small group of students from Merton College and Croydon College.
See further pictures of the event.
Understandably, pensions are not uppermost among young people’s priorities and our research found that most young people take a “live now, save later” attitude towards pensions. Nevertheless, it did indicate that many recognise the need to save for a pension, even if most aren’t actually doing so. More encouragingly, they did welcome two of the key planks in our reform - automatic enrolment and the introduction of Personal Accounts.
I was also most impressed with the thoughtful questions and interest in saving for retirement expressed by those at the event. And the pertinent issues raised by the students - including the importance of clear information, who will decide how the money will be invested, the degree of risk and the benefits of tax relief - have certainly given me some food for thought.
The young people’s report wasn’t the only one we published today. We also published the results of our survey “Attitudes to Pensions 2006”. Again, this showed widespread support for personal accounts - with over 80% of respondents in favour. It did also highlight the need for simplicity, with a quarter saying they know “little or nothing” about pensions. Something I’m confident we can achieve with the introductions of our reforms in the coming years.
The final publications to hit the stands today were both response documents. The first was a response to the Work and Pensions Select Committee report on personal accounts and the second, our response to the consultation that followed the publication of our Personal Accounts White Paper last year. The consultation response provides a round-up of the many stakeholders’ reactions to our White paper and also some further detail on how proposals will operate, including an announcement that Personal Accounts will be run as an occupational pensions scheme, managed by a board of trustees - thereby placing the interests of members at its heart.
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This entry was posted on Friday, June 15th, 2007 at 4:26 PM by Editor and categorized in General posts.