The House of Commons Work and Pensions Select Committee published its report on its inquiry into “Pensions Reform” on 22 July 2006. Copies of this report can be accessed here, and the weblink is also at the bottom of this page.
EEF submitted written evidence to the Select Committee for this inquiry and subsequently gave oral evidence to the Committee on 12 June 2006. A copy of EEF’s written evidence to the Select Committee is attached below.
The Committee’s report analyses in some detail the package of proposal for reforming the UK’s pensions system that was set out in the government’s White Paper on pensions reform, “Security in Retirement: Towards a New Pensions System”.
It also comments on the various views that were expressed about this package of proposals in the evidence that was submitted to the Select Committee with EEF’s written and oral evidence being referred to in this report on a number of occasions, particularly in relation to the proposed new low-cost pension saving scheme.
In the press statement that the Select Committee issued on this report, Terry Rooney MP, the Chairman of the Select Committee, said that the Committee thinks that “the White Paper reforms are the right way forward. They are not a dramatic simplification of the system, but they do seem to be a package which most interest groups can sign up to”.
The overall assessment of the Select Committee was that the Government’s measures “form a sound basis for a political consensus” and that “other stakeholders – including businesses and unions – are broadly signed up to these measures, recognising the trade offs but viewing them as a significant improvement on the present system”.
The Committee made 55 conclusions and recommendations, the most significant of which are attached in a document below.