We are now about 15 months into the project which, following the recent retirement of Roger Middleton and replacement as co-investigator by Dr James Freeman, will now continue until July 2018. Since our last progress report we have found and examined a huge range of documentary material relevant to the pension reforms of the 1980s. We are in the process of making sense of all these documents but here are some highlights of our recent findings:

• Portable personal pensions embodied an assault not just on the State Earnings Related Pension (SERPS) but on occupational schemes and insurers.
• Occupational pensions had traditionally been viewed with approval by Conservatives but were viewed by the ‘new right’ as paternalistic and antithetical to individual freedom.
• The actuarial profession was highly concerned about the government’s proposals to abolish SERPS – warning that the public lacked the necessary financial planning skills and would be at risk of misselling.
• The actuarial profession resented the way in which its views were ignored.
• The Government Actuary’s Department was pushed to the limit of its preparedness to cooperate in the process of change, often disagreeing with the assumptions on which it was asked to make projections.

More details can be found in AHRC TPR Project Briefing Note 3.