I wasn’t a fan of the Ros Altmann appointment as Pension
Minister and am not unhappy to see her go. She has been a good champion of pension’s
miss-selling and other inadequacies in our present system, but she has also
been a champion of her own profile. A bit of self-promotion is okay so long as
you get the right things done. But in her time as Pension Minister, frankly,
she didn’t.
She appeared to put on hold Steve Webb’s Defined Ambition
agenda but didn’t push through anything else in its place. She was caught out,
seemingly, by Treasury initiatives around lifetime ISAs, and her most publicised
comments during her tenure were not on the subject of pensions but her critical
observations relating to her then-boss Iain Duncan-Smith.
As she continues to speak for pensions from her seat in the
House of Lords, it is likely to be as a populist voice for change, but without
the detailed knowledge of how to do it- something else that exposed her during
her time as minister.
And I expect we will see a return to the OTT headlines in
the Daily Express with Ros Altmann quoted as the expert. I suspect that many of
these headlines in the past were her own creations and necessarily lessened
whilst she was Pension Minister.
The more junior appointments that follow her tenure suggest
a greater hold of pension policy at the Treasury as well as reflecting a perceived
government view that pensions doesn’t need high profile ministers.
