The government has given its clearest hint yet that all UK workers should be automatically included in company pension schemes.
Work and pensions secretary David Blunkett said people had to understand that they could not expect the state to ‘bail them out’ if they failed to make proper provision for themselves.
Blunkett said people who had not taken advantage of company schemes had to be made to think again about what was in their best interests.
He insisted that he had not decided whether the government should force workers to save, but he said the state has a responsibility to make sure there is sufficient for people to live on.
“It is a very interesting question as to whether Government has a responsibility for actually making people go beyond that,” Blunkett said.
“But we certainly have a responsibility to ensure they know the consequences of not doing that.”
Blunkett will set out his latest thinking at a conference of the Pensions Commission in London tomorrow.
The Commission, headed by Adair Turner, has been tasked with providing radical solutions to the UK’s £57bn pensions black hole. It will report by 30th November.
