Pensions Minister, Torsten Bell, has confirmed that the government is “pressing ahead” with the revived Pensions Commission, with its interim report due to be introduced in the “coming months” and a final report to “follow swiftly on its heels” in early 2027.

Speaking at the Pensions Age Spring Conference yesterday, 30 April, Bell said the interim report is already “well developed”, while the final report will include “concrete policy proposals about how much people need to be saving, who needs to be saving, and how the system is fit for the 21st century”.

The interim report was previously expected to be published in spring 2026, as confirmed by commissioner, Nick Pearce, at the Pensions UK Annual Conference in October 2025, but with publication now said to be “in the coming months” and summer officially beginning on 21 June, it may not arrive until summer 2026.

That would mark a delay compared with the earlier expectation of a spring release.

Following the Pension Schemes Bill clearing parliament and the Pensions Schemes Act coming into force earlier this week, Bell spoke about some of the policies included in the Act and the government’s intentions going forward.

“We are now pressing ahead with the biggest change to the pensions landscape in a very long time. And in lots of ways, what we are doing is dealing with some very specific problems, but also just keeping the process going, building to an actual pension system, not just getting people saving into a savings pot and then hoping it all works out at the end,” he said.

He added: “It's an unfair characterisation, but slightly where we are. That is what we're in the business of.”

He called the Value for Money (VFM) framework “a very big deal” and suggested that it will “make sure we as a sector are all focused on what really matters - returns for savers”.

He also confirmed that the government will be bringing forward regulations for the guided retirement approach in “short order” and encouraged the industry to get involved in the discussion.

“This is a very big deal because it is saying to people, we haven’t got a mad system that says we are automatically going to default you into pension savings, because it turned out that leaving everything to itself did not work, and there were no pension savings. And we are going to assume you don’t need to do anything and engage, but then at the point of retirement, you are suddenly going to need to become an actuary.

“That is not a good way of thinking … and we are not going to continue with that," he explained.

Bell also stressed that the government is “not going to risk some individuals getting bad outcomes” by asking them to go and compare, for example, annuity prices.

Instead, he said the government is "going to put the pressure on trustees and providers to make sure there is a decent default option – that is solid and good and will provide some degree of longevity protection”.

However, he said that if savers want to do something different, that is “totally fine”, as the “state and trustees are not going to tell you how to live your retirement”.

“But we are not going to lead to a bad outcome just because we haven’t bothered putting systems in place to give you what you were saving for, which is a pension, not just a savings pot,” he stressed.  

Bell also said that the government will sort out “small pots and the rest” as part of its ongoing work and called the scale measures in the Pension Schemes Act a “really big deal”.

“I think when people look back on the bill in 15 years, they will think we underestimated the change of the scale with the legislative form, in terms of making sure the people are in bigger, better pension schemes that are in better places to deliver for them over the coming years,” he noted.

“I think it's a very big change, just as it's true of the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) and the rest.”

However, Bell argued that this is “just a start” and the government’s goal over the course of this parliament is to have addressed the fundamental question: “Have we built that pension landscape, and is fit for the middle of the 21st century, that is delivering good quality pensions, that people can understand them, that they trust, and deliver adequate retirement incomes for ordinary worker?”

“We've made a lot of progress on that in the bill, but we are definitely not done,” he concluded.

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