Thanks for this. It's good to highlight (and learn from) just what a success NEST has been - from the initial construction of a consensus for change, to the adoption of "nudge" style auto-enrollment, to subsequent institution building. But for all those achievements we seem to have fallen into the trap of thinking "job done". That's led both policy makers and contributors to assume the existing NEST contribution rate will deliver decent future top-up pensions. But will it? No. The rate would need to more than double to match the rate of a good defined benefit pension scheme. So there's a lot of room for improvement, and the clock is ticking...
Yes agree. Though if the answer is "we shouldn't do good things lest they spoil the case for better things" I start to worry. Getting started is better than doing nothing - unless you're a revolutionary who wants temporary trauma to trigger the coup. And I'm not.
Absolutely agree with you Polly, but there's a level of complacency around Nest that's unjustified by its likely future inadequacy. It's a real shame because all the heavy lifting has been done already. We just need an awareness that contribution rates need to rise (gradually if not immediately) to actually deliver the pensions people have been led to believe Nest will deliver them
Really interesting, as ever, Polly. I really liked your point about how to get the politics right and maintain broad consensus. There's something compelling about the idea of a quid pro quo 'deal' like the one on pensions that might be worth applying to other wicked policy questions - such as adult social care - but perhaps also questions like reforming party funding
I think it's hard to translate straightforwardly into policy, and I fully understand why practically we need to draw bright lines for the purposes of the law, but for a long time I've thought we could stand to treat adults a bit more like children (paternalistic protections on everything from pensions to tobacco) and children a bit more like adults (democratic participation, autonomy over their education)
Great point that the policy combined behavioural nudges and mutual contributions (employer pension contribution was tied to the employee contribution). And what I hadn’t realised until I read your piece was it was also tied into wider state pension reform.
A number of different policy instruments that jointly addressed an objective in a coherent, mutually supportive way. Who’d have thunk this could work.
I wonder was another thing the willingness of politicians to invest gargantuan amounts of effort and time in policies that pay off decades in the future, well after they’ve been booted out by voters. Hat tip to all involved.
The other thought is that surely this can be a model to solve other seemingly intractable policy issues: the social care cost lottery, reforming welfare to fairly provide support when needed but encourage and enable incentives to work, and who knows, maybe in some future nirvana, even the triple lock.
Thank you Polly, this was excellent - I had not known about this. On your idea for an article exploring vulnerability, if you go ahead with it, could you also think about the very, very difficult problem of protecting people as they age and become easy prey for con men and women. I think this is a problem that is only going to grow as our population ages, and as medical advances allow us to live longer.
Thanks for this. It's good to highlight (and learn from) just what a success NEST has been - from the initial construction of a consensus for change, to the adoption of "nudge" style auto-enrollment, to subsequent institution building. But for all those achievements we seem to have fallen into the trap of thinking "job done". That's led both policy makers and contributors to assume the existing NEST contribution rate will deliver decent future top-up pensions. But will it? No. The rate would need to more than double to match the rate of a good defined benefit pension scheme. So there's a lot of room for improvement, and the clock is ticking...
Yes agree. Though if the answer is "we shouldn't do good things lest they spoil the case for better things" I start to worry. Getting started is better than doing nothing - unless you're a revolutionary who wants temporary trauma to trigger the coup. And I'm not.
Absolutely agree with you Polly, but there's a level of complacency around Nest that's unjustified by its likely future inadequacy. It's a real shame because all the heavy lifting has been done already. We just need an awareness that contribution rates need to rise (gradually if not immediately) to actually deliver the pensions people have been led to believe Nest will deliver them
Really interesting, as ever, Polly. I really liked your point about how to get the politics right and maintain broad consensus. There's something compelling about the idea of a quid pro quo 'deal' like the one on pensions that might be worth applying to other wicked policy questions - such as adult social care - but perhaps also questions like reforming party funding
I think it's hard to translate straightforwardly into policy, and I fully understand why practically we need to draw bright lines for the purposes of the law, but for a long time I've thought we could stand to treat adults a bit more like children (paternalistic protections on everything from pensions to tobacco) and children a bit more like adults (democratic participation, autonomy over their education)
Thank you, this was excellent.
Great point that the policy combined behavioural nudges and mutual contributions (employer pension contribution was tied to the employee contribution). And what I hadn’t realised until I read your piece was it was also tied into wider state pension reform.
A number of different policy instruments that jointly addressed an objective in a coherent, mutually supportive way. Who’d have thunk this could work.
I wonder was another thing the willingness of politicians to invest gargantuan amounts of effort and time in policies that pay off decades in the future, well after they’ve been booted out by voters. Hat tip to all involved.
The other thought is that surely this can be a model to solve other seemingly intractable policy issues: the social care cost lottery, reforming welfare to fairly provide support when needed but encourage and enable incentives to work, and who knows, maybe in some future nirvana, even the triple lock.
Thank you Polly, this was excellent - I had not known about this. On your idea for an article exploring vulnerability, if you go ahead with it, could you also think about the very, very difficult problem of protecting people as they age and become easy prey for con men and women. I think this is a problem that is only going to grow as our population ages, and as medical advances allow us to live longer.