Pressure is on for new City and pensions ministers in 2023

Ministerial stability has not been a common feature of our recent political times. The most high-profile churn this year has been on Downing Street (three prime ministers and four chancellors) but over the longer term the most damning indictment of our culture of rapid ministerial turnover is surely the 14 housing ministers we’ve had in the past 12 years.

It is therefore something of a pleasant surprise that the ministers most involved in matters around personal finances and pensions policy had, until recently, represented two pillars of stability. John Glen as City minister and Guy Opperman as pensions minister each became the longest serving occupants of their respective roles in history.

Griffith now finds himself tasked with piloting one of the most significant post-Brexit bills through parliament – the Financial Services and Markets Bill.

After both were consigned to the backbenches in the brief Liz Truss premiership, each has now returned to their former departments in more senior roles, leaving new occupants to grapple with the many challenges that even these long serving ministers had not yet resolved.

The new City minister is Andrew Griffith, a man with a varied CV encompassing roles as diverse as chief financial officer at Sky, chairman of Just Eat and head of the Number 10 policy unit under Boris Johnson.

One of relatively few close Johnson allies still serving in ministerial office, Griffith now finds himself tasked with piloting one of the most significant post-Brexit bills through parliament – the Financial Services and Markets Bill. This legislation will see new objectives for the financial regulators to facilitate growth and competitiveness and the repeal of European Union laws to enable domestic regulatory reform in areas such as Mifid and Solvency II.

The bill is currently working its way through the Commons and is already opening up a wider debate about the future of the financial advice market in the UK.

There is plenty for Trott to do, with one of the biggest omissions of the past five years being the failure to implement the recommendations of the 2017 review of auto-enrolment.

The amendment tabled by Harriet Baldwin, recently elected to chair the Treasury Select Committee, seeks to allow financial services firms to provide personalised guidance to customers which would sit outside the definition of regulated financial advice. With the Financial Conduct Authority also recently publishing its own proposals to widen access to advice, this is an area in which Griffith will surely be taking a keen interest.

Meanwhile, at the Department for Work and Pensions, it is Laura Trott who takes up the mantle from Opperman (after a brief cameo in the role from Alex Burghart). Trott has only been an MP since 2019 and is taking her first step on the ministerial ladder with the pensions brief. A former special adviser to David Cameron on education and early years policy, Trott now has an opportunity to make her mark in a policy area geared towards the other end of the life cycle.

In his six years in post, Opperman had some notable achievements, including legislating for collective defined contribution pensions, the pensions dashboard and ESG investing by pension funds. However, there remains plenty for Trott to do, with one of the biggest omissions of the past five years being the failure thus far to implement the recommendations of the 2017 review of automatic enrolment.

Another area where there is unfinished business is in ensuring more savers are accessing the free pensions guidance services available to them. Since Pension Wise was launched as part of the pension freedoms, user feedback has been outstanding, but uptake has remained stubbornly low.

With more savers considering early pot access due to the cost-of-living crisis, and the ever-present risk of pension scams, perhaps the new minister will be open to some more forceful interventions to drive up guidance usage.

This has been a year of huge political turmoil. Let’s hope that our new City and pensions ministers can once again provide stability but, more importantly, drive ahead with positive agendas.

Simon Fitzpatrick is head of UK public affairs at H/Advisors Cicero