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In the Autumn Statement on 5 December 2013, the Chancellor announced the Government’s position that people should spend, on average, up to one third of their adult life drawing a State Pension.

On 5 December 2014, the DWP published a note which provides further detail on this core principle and how it may be defined in practice.

On 3 December 2013, the DWP published the Keeling versions of the Pensions Bill 2013-14 (the Bill).  This document shows the changes to existing legislation that would result from the Bill and has been produced to assist in its scrutiny.  The document is not an exhaustive account of all changes to enactments resulting from the entirety of the Bill, but is designed to assist understanding of the effect of changes where this is not immediately apparent.  The document is based on the print of the Bill as introduced to Parliament, and has been updated following introduction into the House of Lords on 30 October 2013.

This GAD bulletin provides an overview of some of the measures announced the the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, when he delivered his Autumn Statement on Thursday 5 December.

The topics discussed are:

• State Pension age
• basic State Pension
• National Insurance (NI) contributions
• welfare spending
• income drawdown
• pensions taxation: Individual Protection 2014
• Public Sector pay
• UK Insurance Growth Action Plan
• Solvency II
• payments to Equitable Life policyholders.

On 5 December 2013, the NAPF published its 39th Annual Survey.

3,263 NAPF members took part in the survey, covering nearly 890 funds.  Taking all the schemes together, the survey covered a total of nine million scheme members and £706 billion of assets.

Key findings include:

• DB schemes:  scheme closure rate slows but challenges remain
• DC schemes: member growth with advent of automatic enrolment and average annual management charge low at 0.46%
• investment strategy trends:  steady move from equities to alternative assets.

On 4 December 2013, TPR issued a press release, urging schemes to continue the drive to improve the quality of their record-keeping by correcting errors in ‘common data’ (basic data items required to uniquely identify a scheme member, e.g. surname, NI number, date of birth) and by putting plans in place to improve the quality of ‘conditional data’.

The call to action follows TPR’s code of practice for trust-based DC schemescoming into effect, and the launch of its consultation, Regulating defined benefit pension schemes, including an updated DB funding code of practice.

TPR intends to review its record-keeping guidance in 2014 following the passage of the current Pensions Bill and the outcome of its thematic review of record-keeping, which covers a sample of around 250 schemes of different sizes.  TPR is, however, concerned that some schemes may have stalled on progress amid speculation it intends to set stringent targets for the presence of conditional data in scheme records.  With this in mind, TPR’s executive director for DC, governance and administration Andrew Warwick-Thompson confirmed that TPR will not be setting targets for conditional data in the same way that it did for common data.  However, TPR expects schemes to be able to demonstrate that they have credible plans in place to improve this data and may set targets around the timings for these plans to be implemented.