Pensions expert says employers should be allowed to change schemes

Employers should be allowed to change pensions promises made to staff, according to a leading pensions expert.

Alan Pickering, who is on the board of the Pensions Regulator and author of a 2002 government-sponsored report about pensions, said there should be “a one-off opportunity for employers to renegotiate the past”.

The Pensions Regulator was set up in 2005 to make sure employers fund their schemes properly.

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His comments, at the National Association of Pension Funds conference in Edinburgh, follow his controversial statement earlier in the week that the National Pensions Saving Scheme proposed by the Pensions Commission could do “lethal damage” to existing pension funds.

An Amicus spokesman vowed to fight any plans to allow businesses to cut pensions, saying: “How can you even think of depriving people of their hard-earned money that they have put away for their retirement?”