Guy Opperman resigns as pensions minister

In a statement on Twitter, Opperman said: "Now mourning is over I wrote a letter of thanks as departing after 5 years as Minister at DWP."

Opperman became the longest serving Pensions Minister on 11th June 2022, surpassing Steve Webb's total of 1,822 days.

He initially resigned on 7th July 2022 as part of the mass resignations surrounding Boris Johnson's leadership, before being reinstated the next day.

In his resignation letter, Opperman said: "There remains much for my successor to do, from expanding automatic enrolment, to professional trustees, proper measurement of value for money, expanding superfunds, illiquid investment and CDCs, and ensuring we have a much better system for individual defined contribution retirement planning.

"I will be fully supportive of the new teams and forever grateful to have had the chance to serve."

David Brooks, technical director at independent consultancy Broadstone, commented: “Looking back over the pensions career of Guy Opperman will mostly be a frustrating experience. His tenure was compromised by Parliamentary time being hoovered up by Brexit and Covid related issues.

“A case in point is the Pensions Act 2021 which began life as Pensions Bill 2019. While it eventually progressed covering primarily Pensions Dashboards, CDC and the new funding and notifiable events regime for DB schemes - the latter two are still not in force, the pensions dashboard activation is at least 3 years away and CDC is slowly but surely coming to fruition for one scheme.

“Guy had some big issues to get moving to change the UK pensions landscape and his frustration came out towards the end with the glacial progress of a leviathan like industry. ESG, ongoing digitisation and rise in professionalisation will be some of the big ticket items for his successor to take forward.”

Kate Smith, head of pensions at Aegon, added: “Guy Opperman was the UK’s longest serving Pensions Minister, serving in the role for just over five years. He bought a period of stability which meant he was able to get his teeth into a number of initiatives, some more successful than others. Many of these are still in flow, such as the pensions dashboards, scheme consolidation and value for money, and initiatives to improve pension engagement. His biggest success was probably the Pension Schemes Act 2021 which introduced new duties for those running pension schemes as well as pushing forward pensions dashboards. The impact of this has the potential to transform pensions for the benefit of members.   

“Opperman bought a period of stability to the Pensions Minister role, we hope this will continue. His tenue has clearly demonstrated that he had a lot of ideas, but it takes time to deliver them, from consultation, to legislation to implementation. Fewer and more focused initiatives may have meant increased impact.

“We hope there will be a smooth transition to the new Pension Minister, who will need to get up to speed quickly. Pensions can be a challenging topic, with many different angles. One of the benefits of Opperman’s long tenue is that he was able to build up a wealth of expertise and clearly demonstrated his passion for improving pensions.

“The new Pensions Minister will have a lot on their plate with many issues vying for attention. Pension policy has been a hive of activity in recent years, and there’s still much unfinished business, but a new Minister will bring fresh thinking. Whoever gets the role, getting pensions dashboards over the line must be the top priority, nothing should be allowed to disrupt this.”