It seems to have taken an awful long time, but this afternoon, the pensions bill finally had its third reading in the House of Commons and can now pass on to the House of Lords.

In his delivery, pensions minister Mike O’Brien announced a couple of changes: that armed services personnel are to be exempted from auto-enrolment, because the MoD’s scheme “works very well”; and that the issue of transferring funds into personal accounts would be reviewed in 2015, but that under pressure from the industry he had omitted the facility from the bill.

O’Brien said that despite providers having concerns about the transfer of small pots from ex-employers, “[his] personal view is that these small pension pots should be able to be put in”.

Well, frankly, this just doesn’t ring true and I’ll tell you for why.

This government has shown time and again that if it wants to do something in financial services – or specifically in pensions – it just goes ahead and does it.

Oh yes, it consults, but once it has done that, it leaks, gets a bit of third-party feedback through the press and goes ahead with whatever it wanted to do in the first place.

This has resulted in poorly conceived and executed pensions policy in the form of stakeholder pensions and umpteen examples of poorly drafted pensions legislation – ask a pensions lawyer and they’ll be delighted to give you a list of them.

And the same will happen again, because the greatest obstacle to the success of personal accounts is the prime minister’s dogged insistence on maintaining a means-tested benefit system that does not work.

Just like almost everything the government has said on personal accounts, I remain highly sceptical of the scheme getting off the ground, let alone being a success.

Finally, some sad news.

We received the news this week that Neil Marsh, managing director of Hornbuckle Mitchell, finally succumbed to his battle with cancer (full story on page 14).

It is often said that only the good die young. It’s a cliché, but in Neil’s case, the industry has lost a tireless campaigner for better quality and transparency for pension clients.

His colleague, Dave White, called him “an inspirational leader” and it is no wonder – he spent his last day on the planet working alongside his colleagues. If some of our politicians could display a modicum of that commitment, we could make serious inroads into the savings gap.

But no, they are destined to live long lives safe in the knowledge that their pensions are not only copper-bottomed, but made of carbon fibre and are teflon-coated.

They also know – and we should never forget it – that we’ll still be paying for them even then.

Pádraig Floyd, editor

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