Imagine for a moment that you are the Prime Minister, with a decent working majority and the luxury of being able to ponder the big strategic questions.

Solving the long-term care challenge, improving our transport infrastructure and maintaining Britain’s status as a world-leading centre for high-tech skills would surely all be on your list.

The challenge of providing decent retirement incomes should be there too. I like to think the PM would also be getting the government machine to think very hard about the groups currently missing out on the benefits of workplace pension saving.

Focusing on the 4.5 million self-employed is a hard nut to crack. With only 12 per cent of them saving into a personal pension, leaving the problem in the ‘too difficult’ tray is just storing up problems for the future.

The government has committed to finding a way to improve retirement incomes for the self-employed. However, no one has yet identified a mechanism for collecting contributions from self-employed.

The PLSA’s view is that an effective solution to the self-employed challenge will need to deliver three things that we know the self-employed value highly. Those are being in control of their own destinies; being able to trust the provider (the self-employed tend to distrust government); and flexibility to take account of what can be rollercoaster earnings.

Trust, flexibility, control. Perhaps they provide a good starting point for tackling one of the most important policy challenges on our national ‘to do’ list?

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