So taking the politics out of pensions is proving harder than this sensible-sounding phrase suggests.
The decision to cap the lifetime allowance at £1m has had people up in arms, with fears it won’t just hit chief execs with deep pockets and additional pots of money, but will also creep down to middle-income earners.
Pile on top of that the near guarantee that pension tax relief is going to change after the election and you could have a tax-planning nightmare on your hands.
And to add to that there are questions about the fact defined benefit members enjoy a considerably higher lifetime allowance than their defined contribution counterparts.
I wouldn’t be surprised if that imbalance was somehow addressed in the not too distant future too. But then again I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t – after all, the people with power and the will to make DB and DC more equitable on that front probably enjoy their freedom to build up a decent-sized DB retirement income.
And that gives a flavour of the fear about combining a swingeing cut to the lifetime allowance with a likely reduction in the tax relief available to higher earners – that those key business decision-makers will walk away from workplace pensions in their droves, reducing their interest in the quality of provision they negotiate for the little people below.
Illustration by Ben Jennings
Whether that latter point is actually a genuine behavioural likelihood remains to be seen.
But it’s the vulnerability of pensions policy that concerns many, and on Thursday the National Association of Pension Funds launched its report The Case for an Independent Retirement Savings Commission, in a drive to move pensions further out of reach of campaigning politicians and create a longer-term plan.
It focuses on how bouts of policy-tinkering makes consumers feel about pension saving – with the less-than-positive result making an independent commission seem like a no-brainer.
However, the pension tax examples are evidence of how inextricably linked pensions and politics can be. But at the very least we could perhaps hope for greater consultation on major policy changes so we don’t get a repeat of 2014’s Budget bombshell.
Maxine Kelly is editor at Pensions Expert. You can follow her on Twitter @MaxineEK and the team @pensions_expert.
