The only way is up - pensions say goodbye to 1988

Her hatred of public transport was a blind spot and the laudable act of privatising British Rail was impossible to get right, and allowing the sort of deregulation that let loose young salesman incentivised to persuade employees to leave their final salary schemes was a disaster.

I mention this as the TUC’s pension team of Nigel Stanley and Craig Berry are putting together some thoughts on how we are at the end of an era of ill-repute that started in 1988 – when shoulder pads and excessive confidence in capitalism reached fever pitch. If I understand it right, the TUC’s paper will herald 2012 as the dawn of an era of good practice, confidence and hope in pensions.

This optimism was evident at the launch of research by Nest in Westminster last week. Grave faces are more the norm for those working in pensions, so the beaming smiles of Nest chief Tim Jones and pensions minister Steve Webb was an indication something was up.

Jones could barely contain his glee at early opt-out figures as low as 10 per cent – “This is not me making this up, these people like these reforms”. He further confounded the naysayers by revealing 63 per cent of unpensioned employees think auto-enrolment is a good idea. He praised the government’s “spectacularly successful” ad campaign from last October for aiding keeping opt-out rates low. In a similar ebullient mood was Webb, who gloated: “Whisper it quietly, this just could be a successful popular government policy.” He said to expect more TV adverts containing household names, saying ‘I’m in’ too. If you’ll pardon the cynicism, it almost feels like the heady optimism of the late 1980s all over again.