Commenting on the areas where the ACA would like to see the parties make meaningful commitments, Bob Scott, ACA Chairman said:
“On private pensions, we want the parties to be much clearer on what they intend to do over the next 5 years to extend auto-enrolment pensions to what will be, by 2018, over 8 million employees presently excluded from the scheme. We also feel the public need better to understand why minimum AE pension contributions need to increase and what the parties are proposing in this area.
“On defined benefit pensions we doubt the TPR needs to be given major new powers to protect members’ interests – many of its existing powers have rarely been exercised. Indeed, a ‘knee jerk’ reaction to a handful of hard cases could be counter-productive in undermining what remains of DB provision.
“More important, we detail – summarised in the attached manifesto – the flexibilities needed to help employers offer sustainable and secure DB arrangements into the future, including the pre-requisite reforms to allow schemes the opportunity to voluntarily consolidate with other arrangements in a cost-effective way.
“On savings generally, we strongly favour a simplification of the range of ISA vehicles presently on offer, which we feel only serves to confuse the public. We also see early access to a proportion of savers’ pensions as a possibly useful assistance to house purchase, where the Lifetime ISA build-up of funds will be modest for many years ahead.
“On State pensions, we see no reason for the parties not to honour the 2015 pledge for the ‘triple lock’ to run until 2020, but thereafter – on grounds of equity – we feel the commitment should ease so State pensions grow in line with either earnings or take into consideration a number of factors, including changes in earnings and prices, and pensioners’ income and consumption needs in general. The State Pension Age should also increase to age 68 between 2037-39 as recommended by the recent independent inquiry.
“We urge the parties to be more specific as to how the developing social care crisis will be addressed. It is clear without a major range of policy initiatives, perhaps involving social care vouchers and the launch of social insurance schemes, the strain on NHS resources and on local authority budgets will escalate as the numbers needing help grows. Politicians have ‘fudged’ the issue for too long and we are hopeful that the public is prepared to accept the implications of policies that begin to turn the problem around for the longer-term.”
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