Robin Ellison – Please stop.

Please stop.

A recent High Court decision – Renishaw v Ross Trustees Services – illustrated the importance of wording and punctation in pensions matters. An Oxford comma here, or a semi-colon there, can transform the meaning of a scheme rule, which is why legal draftsmen as late as the 1960s were encouraged never to use punctuation in pension documents (or legislation) – forcing them to be economical and unambiguous in the wording.

Nowadays we are more sophisticated, and even fiscal statutes use commas and full stops. The Pensions Regulator (TPR) for example uses punctuation with some profusion to explain its objectives, although it changes the word content sometimes without telling us, which is perhaps a step towards modernisation too far.

The full stop – nowadays the most commonly used item of punctuation – was not normally used by the Greeks, Hebrews or Romans until late on, and Lord Renton in a report in 1975 on the drafting of legislation devoted nearly a page to encouraging the use of the full stop in Acts of Parliament. He assumed that the full stop would be placed at the bottom of the line. (like this.)

But now the government website – broadly unusable because of its opaque design – has devoted around half-a-million of our money in moving its own full stop to what the ancient Greeks called stigmḕ mésē (στιγμὴ μέση), ie a middle height full stop, in real life replicated these days by the semi-colon, a much under-used and under-appreciated piece of punctuation. The revised stop is in a pleasing shade of turquoise, a brand colour of Tiffany's, so is clearly intended to move itself upmarket. Regrettably few computer keyboards have a middle-height full-stop key, but that may come. Helpfully there is a 150-page guide on how to use the logo (Dotty civil servants spend £500k on a full stop, Daily Telegraph, 1 July 2025).

The guide is here. The idea is explained in the guidance as a "concept" that can act as "the bridge between government
and the UK, by the side of users to help make information and services easier and more useful". The guide adds: "Used within our wordmark and as a graphic device across all GOV.UK channels, the dot is a guiding hand for life."

The dot is a circle on a background of a different colour, and will be used in graphics for government services such as paying taxes or checking the balance of a student loan.

The guidance – which is longer than the most recent Strategic Defence Review (144 pages) and three times as long as the recent National Security Strategy (55 pages) – gives examples of how the dot could be used. The guidance says that "the spacing between the crown and the wordmark is three dots, and the dot within the wordmark is two dots in width... the adaptive dot colour should be reserved for moments where the brand requires more expression, and should not be used in communications that require a more sombre or serious tone...".

We need some advice

When we help our members, we need to reflect whether we are (1) giving advice, (2) giving standalone simplified advice, (3) giving holistic financial advice, (4) giving guidance, (5) giving regulated advice and now the new kid on the block (replacing simplified advice) (6) giving targeted support, explained in the latest 250 page (!) work-around suggested by the Financial Conduct Authority. We also need to consider the implications of robo-advice and hybrid advice. And ensure we understand the difference between independent and restricted advice. And the role of Money and Pensions Service (MaPS). And AI. Some of this guidance/advice is free. And some of it is expensive. And we need to remember the Advice Guidance Boundary Review (AGBR). And the role of the Financial Advice Market Review (FAMR) from 2016, now rather forlornly forgotten.

Even the FCA is confused (see: Reading between the lines: Understanding of targeted support in pensions, FCA Research Note, 30 June 2025) – there is a separate long document looking at DC pensions in particular. Now, not only will the man and woman on the Clapham Omnibus not understand their pension arrangements (because of HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) complexity), they will also not understand the kinds of advice they need or is available to help them (because of FCA complexity). And the FCA wonders why so few of us seek advice, and prefer to ring up a mate or have a chat in the pub. Some things should be removed from regulation, despite the dangers. Just read the FCA's PERG8 and understand why advice is in such short supply (and expensive when we can find it)  – and why productivity is so hard to come by. Regulators will eventually understand once we try to micro-regulate, we risk adverse outcomes for the consumer.

Meanwhile, although the FCA pledged to the prime minister that it would go easy on fresh regulation, concurrent and continuing FCA initiatives in making pensions regulation simpler include:

• Smarter Regulatory Framework (SRF)
• ISA simplification
• Compensation Framework Review (CFR)
• Disclosure reform
• Pensions dashboards
• Pension engagement trials
• Retirement Income Advice Review
• ‘Helping savers understand their pension choices' consultation

So, prime minister, there is productivity – it's just not quite where you wanted it.

Pension Schemes Bill/Act 2025

Another year, another Pension Act, or as David Pollard and Sebastian Allen of Wilberforce Chambers noted in a recent lecture, another Pension Schemes Act (PSA), which may involve a distinction without a difference. But whether we really deserve another piece of primary legislation every couple of years is uncertain; the Americans and Canadians and the Australians seem to manage with one only every twenty-five years or so. The barristers explained in a riveting talk (if you are into that kind of thing) on all the ways we can now go to jail for pension crimes (Association of Pension Lawyers, Crimes and Fines, 30 June 2025).

All pretty scary, especially given that TPR is rather Trumpish in its unpredictability about using its discretion on whether or not to prosecute. The draft of the PSA still needs to have put into it the only really useful provision, that of overcoming the pernicious Virgin case decision, which involved another judge trying unhelpfully to unscramble a thirty-year-old pensions omelette.

One of the less-useful ‘reforms' in the Bill is its implementation of value for monet (VfM). At some stage we and the government will all regret the unintended consequences of tilting at the value-for-money windmill; even TPR cannot calculate how much VfM it itself is achieving. And the Bill attempts to justify its central economic theory that fewer schemes are better schemes (it may be that consolidation is beneficial but where is the evidence? And what might be the unintended consequences?).

Finally, even more scary is a 430 page (!) explanatory note on the costs involved of the Bill, which is around four times the length of the Bill itself, and almost certainly wrong. And the 430 pages is only a ‘summary', so we don't get the full document. Just click on the document, count the number of fingers in the air, and despair. We might also open a book on whether the present very able pensions minister will still be in post by the time the Bill become law or has been translated upwards, thus avoiding accountability.

Pensions, bananas and the battle of Hastings

As most of the older ones amongst us know, the Norman French (actually Vikings in disguise) conquered their then equivalent of their 51st state in 1066, although we had our sporadic revenge at for example Agincourt and Waterloo. Now we are friends with the French, mostly united in trying to contain Mr Putin. It's partly because we have similar problems not only in relations to the red menace but also the geriatric menace, an issue we both have in common with many other countries such as Panama for example.

There is a state of emergency in the north western Panamanian province of Bocas del Toro after pension reforms sparked widespread protests (see: How banana workers strikes over pensions triggered a state of emergency in Panama, Daily Telegraph, 28 June 2025). One person has died and 300 arrested, the strikes beginning in April initially led by banana workers – made worse when the banana oligopoly Chiquita, laid off all its 6,500 workers. The state defined benefit scheme is one of the highest in Latin America, paying 60% of salary for 20 years of contributions – with the demographics making it unsustainable.

In France, by way of contrast, it is not banana workers but train drivers and the rest of the population which nearly brought down the French government in late June in relation to pensions policy. French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou intended to submit legislation on pensions in autumn 2025 to take into account agreements made in talks between unions and employers during months of talks. The French government had intended to raise state pension age to 64, trying to save some €40bn, but reneging rather as in the UK which has had to make a series of U-turns on cutting back the welfare state to avoid national bankruptcy, in the face of some of his back-benchers who find it harder to face an electorate than a budget.

At some stage age-related pensions will go the way of the dodo, since it is absurd economic illiteracy, when half the young population are likely to reach 100, to expect the state to pay them for a 30-year retirement. While the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and TPR obsess with value for money (see above) and other forms of regulatory grandstanding, the system as a whole needs a gradual change to disability pensions – in the twentieth century age was simply an analogue for disability, and is no longer appropriate.

Cabinet Office and the future of quangos

TPR is encouragingly trying, although disappointingly not as hard as the FCA, to respond positively to the prime minister's request to prioritise growth over regulation. It is moving for example to ‘tell us once' so that we do not have to fill in very similar annual returns for TPR, HMRC and the Pension Protection Fund (PPF). And it is maybe trying to change the tone of regulation, which has not so far been evidenced in practice. Set out below is an example of what it thinks (or used to think) was a ‘win' for deregulation in bureaucraticspeak:

Case Study 2: DWP maintaining a close working relationship with TPR to mitigate resource constraints

One of DWP's major ALBs – TPR – is largely funded by a levy on the private pensions industry. Facing a situation where the levy was in deficit, but the Regulator was required to implement new powers arising from the Pension Schemes Act 2021. DWP and TPR agreed that increased strategic engagement about priorities and budget allocation was required.

This engagement was built on a relationship that had developed over a number of years enabling the frank exchange of views and an understanding of the challenges and pressures each party faced. In addition to existing working level meetings and regular meetings between the Chief Executive and the responsible minister, quarterly meetings were introduced between the DWP Pensions and ALB Executive Leadership Team and TPR Senior Leadership Team.

The meetings allowed full and open discussion about strategic priorities; resource implications and where appropriate, the support that DWP specialist functions, such as commercial and digital, could offer. As a result, there was a clear and joint understanding of government priorities, and DWP and TPR were in a good position to reach agreement on how available resources should best be used to deliver those priorities over the Spending Review period.

(see: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/arms-length-body-sponsorship-code-of-good-practice/arms-length-body-sponsorship-code-of-good-practice)

More meetings was probably not what the government had in mind when it talked about regulatory efficiency, but regulators are different from us.

Can TPR survive?

Meanwhile there have been some straws in the wind that the current policy of TPR's regulatory expansion is under strain:

• Several think tanks have reviewed the future of government bodies (see Quangocracy: The future of public bodies, Re:State, February 2025). 
• The Cabinet Office is examining whether there could be a cull of public organisations (Hundreds of quangos to be examined for potential closure as Government takes back control, Cabinet Office press release, 7 April 2025).
• The prime minister (Sir Keir Starmer vows to axe quangos, claiming they hinder economic growth, The Times, 12 March) is keen to see fewer public bodies..
• The Institute for Government, the main training house for ministers, thinks we could do more with less (When should public bodies exist?, The Institute for Government July 2023), and. . .
• The House of Lords Financial Services Committee is pressing for financial services regulators to rethink their attitude to risk (Culture of risk aversion among financial regulators undermines their competitiveness and growth objective, 13 June 2025)

So far there's not much sign that the TPR budget and headcount is being reduced; indeed it is expanding its activities into further areas such as the control of trustees and administration. As the number of schemes diminishes, and as interventionism is reduced, there must be a question as to whether TPR in its present form can survive.

TPR not alone

A legal commentator, Joshua Rozenberg, runs a blog on substack in which he noted that a regulator of legal regulators could do with some improvements; he reports: "[Kathryn] Stone thought the problem faced by the Legal Service Board was that it had to exercise its functions at one remove from the front line".

The board and executive of the oversight regulator are no more experienced than the boards and executives they are overseeing. Oversight gives responsibility but it does not, in itself, give sharper insight into, or greater care for, the public interest. Still less does it give a better understanding of the challenges of front-line regulation.

Stone, the outgoing Bar Standards Board chair, suggested the Legal Services Board should support robustly governed front-line regulators. "What would be truly helpful to my board in holding our executive team to account," she continued, "would be some reliable benchmarking of equivalent regulatory functions across the front line. We could then see what good performance looked like, how our own compared and aim to emulate the best."

We can all enjoy a certain degree of schadenfreude when regulators who are regulated complain that their regulators do not understand how hard real life is on the front-line.

Without borders…

Most of us are familiar with the noble efforts of Doctors Without Borders, the French charity MSF (which does good work, but is sadly not immune from its own political grandstanding). But MSF might want to sue for the misuse of its brand by others; there are now ‘Journalists without borders', absolutely a grandstanding operation; ‘Translators without borders'; and even ‘Mice without borders'.  And now, of course, we have Tax Inspectors without Borders (see: Tax Inspectors Without Borders to release 10-year retrospective report, OECD, Paris, 26 June 2025,) These are brave (mostly) men armed or equipped with nothing more than a three-piece pin-stripe suit, bowler and brolly. We need to abjure any suggestions that at some stage there will be of pension regulators without borders, although EIOPA, from which the UK is for the moment broadly immune, is expanding its operations.

TPR as good guy…

Sometimes TPR gets it right. A good regulator should help the system as well as admonish it. Given the cost and complexity of court proceedings, especially in matters involving a complex subject, using a regulator to permit schemes to restructure where appropriate is one of the useful things it can do. In the Littlewoods case, the Determinations Panel of the Pensions Regulator issued a determination notice regarding the distribution of surplus in the Littlewoods Pension Scheme which had completed a buyout process and still had surplus funds remaining. The rules of the scheme explicitly prohibited modifications that would result in any funds being transferred to the scheme employers. In addition, the rules of the Scheme stated that if any surplus remained after all liabilities had been discharged and the trustee had obtained residual risks insurance, the trustee could, with the principal employer's consent, augment members benefits. Employer consent for augmentation of member benefits was requested and not given. The trustee applied for an order from TPR for authorisation to modify the Scheme rules to allow the surplus assets to be distributed to the principal employer. TPR's Determinations Panel concluded that the trustee was unable to achieve the distribution through other means without undue complexity or cost.

The Determinations Panel agreed to authorise the trustee to modify the scheme to enable it to distribute the surplus to the employer, on the basis that the surplus resulted from additional contributions made by the employer after the scheme was fully funded on the technical provisions basis. What is not in the determination notice is what the application cost, and how long it took to be obtained. But it shows what TPR can do when it is in the mood. And 10 points to Arc Pensions Law for creative advice.

… but still way to go

Nonetheless, there is more to do. The FCA responded to the prime minister's call to encourage productivity and growth by simplifying some of its arcane procedures and cutting its rulebook (it cut 250 pages from its enforcement guide for example, which is a start) and it is rebalancing its approach towards encouraging risk, in principle at least. We have yet to see a similar TPR approach, but maybe it's on its way, although its regulatory creep into other pension areas is not a good sign.

Strikes and service

Strikes in the private sector are unusual these days – but less unknown in the public sector. TPR had its own strike experience a little while back, with little impact on quality of service. Now the Civil Service Pension Scheme is having a moment and PCS members working for civil service pensions administrator MyCSP are set to take six weeks' strike action as they seek formal recognition for the union ahead of the transfer of staff to Capita. PCS has 156 members in MyCSP, including pension administrators, senior pension administrators, telephony administrators, team leaders and managers. MyCSP administers pensions for around 1.7 million scheme members. TPR will need to reflect at some stage on whether a strike can be an excuse for not paying pensions.

To add to the discomfort, on 7 July, the same day the strikes begin, senior Cabinet Office officials appeared at the Public Accounts Committee to speak about the levels of customer service scheme members are now receiving, and the upcoming transfer of administration to Capita. It follows the National Audit Office publication of a critical review (see: Investigation into the administration of the Civil Service Pension Scheme, National Audit Office, HC 951, 16 June 2025) of the organisation's customer services record. 

A lack of trade union recognition means the PCS had no official role in talks related to Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) regulations. The TUPE process is designed to ensure workers' terms and conditions are not negatively impacted when a business is taken on by a new employer.  It also didn't help that a court judgment (McCloud) cost the Cabinet Office around £30m in admin costs alone.

Class action and litigation funding

The UK pension sector is just getting the hang of class action litigation after years of being rather dismissive – but the inventor of the system, the US, is about to includes a Litigation Funding Levy in its Big Beautiful Bill, imposing a 41% levy on litigation finance profits. Which will make the exercise of litigation funding broadly unprofitable (see https://www.finance.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/finance_committee_section-by-section_title_vii3.pdf) likely curtailing demand for the investment vehicle. 

It introduces a comprehensive tax regime for third-party litigation funding by imposing a new tax on income received by both domestic and foreign investors who finance legal claims in exchange for a contingent return, taxing this income at the highest individual income tax rate plus 3.8% which equates to a 40.8% tax.  

The measure also would reclassify such proceeds to exclude them from capital asset treatment and gross income under current provisions, disallows loss offsets, and overrides certain exclusions. It also would impose strict obligations on parties or law firms distributing funds, with penalties for noncompliance.  

Institutional investors, including pension funds, endowments and foundations, have begun in the US to allocate to litigation finance as a diversifying class that is defensive and uncorrelated to equity risk. It is regarded as a low-volatility asset class with a high Sharpe-ratio, meaning it can be a source of strong returns, relative to risk. 

Oddly litigation funding is slightly less important for US civil litigation since many law firms do not have as large a need for outside capital, whereas litigation funding is vital in cases outside the US because in many countries contingency fees are not allowed and because there are loser-pay risks. 

Pensions gearing: not all new ideas have traction…

There might not be a space in the Pension Schemes Bill for another new idea from the US. A proposal posed by a former Goldman Sachs employee, suggests it might be profitable to borrow money to supercharge retirement savings (illegal in the UK, as a vestige of EU law). Mr Abdul Al-Asaad's startup, Basic Capital, will lend its clients $4 for every $1 they put into their retirement account. Basic Capital wants people to take out a mortgage for their 401(k), like a UK personal pension. "I am allowed to finance a Coachella ticket," Mr Al-Asaad said,. "Why can't I finance Berkshire Hathaway?" (See: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-12/401-k-investing-basic-capital-brings-leverage-private-credit-to-savers).

Sounds fun, and might double the value of a pension – which is what government policy on investment is aiming at. But the FCA guidance advice boundary, outdated before it was published, is disappointingly silent on how it would deal with this.

Robin Ellison is, among many other things, the chairman of the College of Lawmakers, a retired pensions lawyer, a visiting professor in pensions law and economics at Bayes Business School, City, University of London and chair of several pension funds