Retirement news

Millions missing out on pension plans

2 May, 2007

The shocking revelation came from Des Hamilton, technical director for The Pensions Advisory Service, who said that eight to ten million UK workers have no company pension scheme at all.

He suggested that there had always been a "fairly high number" of employees that haven't had a company scheme available to them, revealing that this was one of the reasons the UK government was looking to introduce personal accounts in 2012, which are compulsory on the part of the employer provided the employee agrees to join.

The recent Fidelity Retirement Index revealed that nine per cent of employees don't know what type of pension scheme they've got.

However, Mr Hamilton suggested that was not the most troubling issue: "Probably more worrying is not the nine per cent who don't know what they've got, it's the large percentage that don't have anything.

"That's the more troublesome statistic: the big number of people who are doing nothing and making no provision whatsoever. It's very difficult to see what these people are going to do in retirement."

Pensions have been a hot topic in Westminster recently, with chancellor Gordon Brown winning a vote of no confidence tabled by the Tories over his controversial pension tax relief cuts.

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