Royal Mail CDC pensions – ‘Major milestone of progress”

Postal March 19 2019

Great news this week for our Royal Mail group members, as the Government signals a full-on “green light” to the joint CWU/Royal Mail CDC pensions plan…

In publishing their formal response to the consultation they have been running since last November, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Amber Rudd and Pensions Minister Guy Opperman have promised to bring forward the necessary primary legislation to enable this scheme – the first of its type in the UK – to go ahead as soon as Parliamentary time allows.

In the foreword to the response document, Mr Opperman writes: “I am grateful for the work done by the Royal Mail and the Communication Workers Union to agree a proposed Collective Defined Contribution scheme in the UK, in the belief that this will be advantageous to both the employees and the business itself.”

And he concludes: “I now intend to move forward with legislating to facilitate CDC provision as soon as Parliamentary time allows.”

In her statement, Ms Rudd described the CDC proposals as “pioneering” and as “a revolutionary reform” which “should deliver improved investment returns for workers.

“Any steps that result in better saving returns for workers are something to celebrate and I look forward to working with industry to enhance the prospects of millions of workers,” she added.

In this video, Terry Pullinger describes this development as “another major milestone of progress” in bringing in the scheme agreed as a key part of the Four Pillars national agreement and says: “We will have our new pension scheme.

“There is a period of time when the legislation has to be drafted and, given the current political climate, we can’t say exactly when that time is, but we can say our new pensions scheme is coming.”