Rachel Reeves to announce plans to create ‘Canadian-style’ pension model
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Chancellor Rachel Reeves will meet bosses of big pension schemes in Toronto on Wednesday, as she seeks to create a “Canadian-style” model in the UK with massive retirement funds investing in equities and infrastructure.
Reeves wants to unlock the investment potential of the £360bn
But Reeves told a round table of US investors in New York on Tuesday that she wanted to see pension fund assets used to buy listed and unlisted equities as well as to back infrastructure projects, offering better returns to savers.
“I want British schemes to learn lessons from the Canadian model and fire up the UK economy, which would deliver better returns for savers and unlock billions of pounds of investment,” she said.
Reeves will also meet Mark Carney, former Bank of England governor, in Toronto to discuss how best to deploy investment in Britain’s clean technology sector.
Meanwhile, the chancellor revealed that her set piece City of London speech at Mansion House in the autumn will focus on the partnership she wants to see between government, industry and regulators to deliver growth.
Separately, Reeves has in effect ruled out using her Budget in October to change the rules so that pensioners working beyond the state retirement age of 66 should pay national insurance contributions.
The idea has been mooted as a way for the chancellor to close a hole in the public finances but Reeves, speaking on her visit to the US and Canada, said there were “no plans” to make pensioners pay NICs.
Allies of the chancellor said that in this case “no plans” meant she would not make the change because it would defeat her objective of keeping people in the workplace.
