The Pension Service, an executive agency of the Department for Work and Pensions, was established in April 2002 with responsibility for the delivery of work and benefit related services (including Pension Credit, the State Pension and winter fuel payment), and objectives including combating pensioner poverty and promoting saving amongst future pensioners. This is the Agency's sixth annual report and accounts which details its aims and objectives, activities and performance against key targets during the year 2007-08
The Board of the Pension Protection Fund is a public corporation which is accountable to Parliament through the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. It became operational on 6 April 2005.
Disability and Carers Service (DCS) was an executive agency of the Department for Work and Pensions. This is the final annual report as the Service has merged with the Pensions Agency to become the Pension, Disability and Carers Service.
While good governance is a worthy goal by itself, this book argues that it is not a prerequisite for economic growth or development. Challenging the conventional good governance paradigm favored by the donor community, this book exposes the methodological shortcomings of the commonly-used governance indicators developed within the World Bank. It argues that aggregate good governance indicators are less helpful for identifying governance failure in specific areas needing policy interventions. Bringing together contributions from leading political scientists, political economists and development practitioners, this is the first book that focuses on such good governance issues.
Changes made in 2007-08 to the pension schemes of civil servants, NHS staff and teachers are on course to deliver significant savings and stabilise pension costs around their current levels as a proportion of GDP. Yet the value for money of the changes cannot be demonstrated, because the Treasury and employers did not agree the long term role of pensions in recruitment and retention of staff and the Treasury no longer has a financial objective against which to monitor the impact of the changes.And there is a risk that overall costs to taxpayers will be greater as a proportion of GDP, if growth in GDP is permanently less than expected. The 2007-08 changes affected schemes that account for nearly three-quarters of UK public service pay-as-you-go pension payments. There were immediate increases in employee contributions for NHS staff and teachers, following earlier increases for civil servants. The normal pension age was raised for new staff, from 60 years to 65 years in most cases. In addition, a new cost-sharing and capping measure was introduced to transfer, from employer to employees, the risk of extra costs from changes in factors such as pensioners living longer than previously expected. The NAO estimates that these changes will reduce costs to taxpayers in 2059-60 by 14 per cent compared to forecasts made without the changes. Aggregate savings over all years in the period to 2059-60 are equivalent to £67 billion in 2008-09 prices.
