Pensions Reform

For today’s pensioners we are committed to ensuring the income they receive from the state is secure and underpinned by a comprehensive safety-net for those most in need.

We want people to see retirement as an increasingly active phase of life where people have opportunities to continue contributing by working longer and/or volunteering in their communities; and take personal responsibility for ageing well by working, saving and looking after their health and well-being.

We also want to ensure that tomorrow’s pensioners meet their expectations for a comfortable retirement in later life. To do this, we need to simplify the state pension system and get more people saving, and saving more.

The Government has identified a number of reforms to the current system. We are reforming the system by:

• introducing the proposed simple, single-tier state pension to help people understand what they need to save for their retirement.
• enabling people to have more choice about if, when and how they retire;
• radically changing the way people save through our workplace pension reform (automatic enrolment), encouraging many more people to save in a pension;
• reinvigorating workplace pensions, driving up standards and clarifying outcomes to allow people to save more with confidence; and
• raising the state pension age in order to maintain the long-term sustainability of the state pension system.