Advisory Board

The project has an Advisory Board that includes not just academics, but a range of other members from politics, government, business, and the media. They will advise us our research progresses and we thank them for giving up their time to engage with the project.

Nicholas Barr is Professor of Public Economics at the London School of Economics. He has a long-standing involvement with pensions policy and has advised governments in the UK, China, Finland, Sweden and South Africa. [More …]

Ed Cannon is Reader in Economics at the University of Bristol, working mainly on the edges of macroeconomics, on long-run economic development and on pensions and savings. [More …]

Gordon Clark is Director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of the British Academy. An economic geographer, he is interested in the responsibilities and behaviour of investors as regards long-term sustainable investment. [More …]

Josephine Cumbo is the Pensions correspondent of the Financial Times. In 2015 she was the Society of Pensions Professional’s ‘journalist of the year’ for the second year in succession and also won the ‘Personal Finance Education Award’ at the 2015 Santander Personal Finance Media awards (for her investigations into the lack of transparency in the drawdown market — the fastest growing area of the market following April’s pensions freedoms — plus her campaigning work on inequalities in the new state pension). She was also awarded ‘Financial Journalist of the Year’ and ‘Personal Finance Journalist of the Year’ by the Association of British Insurers in 2014 and 2012 respectively.  In addition to reporting, Josephine is also involved in the FT pension plan’s governance committee as a member representative.

Harry Cuniffe is a Senior Advisor in the Department of Work and Pensions’ Contributory Pensions Division.

Frank Field is Labour MP for Birkenhead, which he has represented since 1979. A long-time campaigner against poverty and low pay, during the 1980s Frank served as Shadow Education and Social Security spokesman from 1980-81 and was a member of the Select Committee on Social Services from 1987 before serving as chairman of its successor, the Select Committee on Social Security, between 1990-97. He was Minister for Welfare Reform from 1997-98. In 1999 he helped set up the Pension Reform Group, which he now chairs. Frank has published widely on issues of welfare and poverty.  He is presently chairman of the House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee. [More …]

Gregg McClymont is head of retirement savings at Aberdeen Asset Management, a role that encompasses defined contribution pensions strategy, research and implementation. Before taking up that role he was Labour MP for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East from 2010 to 2015 and served as Shadow Minister for Pensions from 2011-15. He is also a modern British historian. He took his PhD and taught at the University of Oxford and is the author of a number of publications in the field.

Jonathan Punter is Chief Executive of the Punter Southall Group. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries with more than thirty years in the actuarial profession. He has particular expertise in areas of UK pensions and investment strategy. [More …]

Pat Thane is currently Research Professor at King’s College London and a Fellow of the British Academy. She was formerly Leverhulme Professor of Contemporary British History in 1998-2001 at the Institute of Historical Research. She is a leading historian of British social policy both in general and with particular regard to old age and the development of the welfare state. [More …]

David Willetts is presently Executive Chair of the Resolution Foundation as well as Visiting Professor at King’s College London, Governor of the Ditchley Foundation and a member of the Council of the Institute for Fiscal Studies. In the 1980s he worked at the Treasury and then in Mrs Thatcher’s Policy Unit before joining the Centre for Policy Studies in 1987. was Conservative MP for Havant from 1992 to 2015 and his many roles in government include periods as Paymaster General Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and Minister for Universities and Science. He is the author of a number of works on welfare reform, on pensions, and on demographic change. [More …]