Self-employed urged to start saving for retirement amid pension time bomb
Ministers are launching a commission to look at ways to help the self-employed build their pension pots.
1
Figures shared exclusively with the Sun on Sunday show that while nearly half were saving towards a pension in the late Nineties, fewer than 20 per cent are doing so today.
It means over three million self-employed workers are not saving for their retirement.
Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall said: 'I'm concerned that too many people – including millions of hard-working self-employed Brits – aren't saving enough.
'I won't sit by and let their futures hang in the balance.
"We're going to tackle the looming retirement crisis and give working people the retirement they deserve.'
The panel will report back to the Government in 2027.
The Government is currently planning some of the biggest pension reforms in decades.
It earlier announced plans to move billions of pounds of pension savings into larger "megafunds".
The scheme is aimed at boosting savers' retirement pots as well as investment in the UK.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
ITV News
17 minutes ago
- ITV News
What do this year's exam results mean for the future of the Scottish education system?
Around the time that Scottish school pupils were sitting their preliminary exams in February, people in the SNP were whispering in my ear that the Education Secretary, Jenny Gilruth, was vulnerable to being moved from her post in a Scottish Government reshuffle. Today, alongside many young people north of the border, the education secretary will be relieved at this year's exam results. She will see them both as a vindication of how she is doing her job – and the fact that she kept it. Overall attainment is up, with 30.8 per cent of pupils who sat a Higher exam receiving an A grade and 75.9 per cent passing their tests. That is a slight increase on last year and – in the case of top grades – a decent bump on the 2019 results, which were the last set of exams sat before the Covid-19 pandemic. The awards handed out during the various lockdowns were higher than usual as pupils had high-stakes exams removed. In 2020, they were based on heavily moderated teacher estimates before a series of smaller assessments were then used to determine grades the following year. These latest set of results were a key test after a series of controversies last year: from falling pass rates, to blank emails being sent to thousands of pupils instead of exam results, to controversy over how some exams were marked. Chaos, in other words. It had to go smoothly this year and, so far, it has for Gilruth. So, that's the good news. The downside is that the SNP is still being judged on a pledge made a decade ago by former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. 'My aim - to put it bluntly - is to close the attainment gap completely,' she said in a 2015 speech. 'It will not be done overnight - I accept that. But it must be done.' The following year, the Scottish Government's programme for government said ministers were aiming to 'substantially eliminate the gap over the course of the next decade'. Well, we're 12 months out from that deadline, and while the gap has narrowed a little year on year, it is largely stuck at the same level as it was pre-pandemic. Indeed, it has widened for advanced highers. Gilruth, a former modern studies teacher, who was appointed to her cabinet post in 2023, believes that the key to progress is by focusing on what goes on in classrooms and listening to those leading them. Her family and friends still work in the profession, meaning she is left in no doubt about concerns from those on the frontline. She is determined to work with teachers and that has informed her approach to the new body, Qualifications Scotland, which will run next year's exams. Donna Stewart, Scotland's chief examining officer, is a former deputy headteacher, and others are being moved straight from classrooms into senior positions. Teachers at the sharp end say this is filtering down to them with a 'very positive' Curriculum Improvement Cycle, which was set up in 2021 to help develop how subjects are taught, listening to those in classrooms and being unafraid to criticise the outgoing Scottish Qualifications Authority. The SQA is being scrapped – and replaced by Qualifications Scotland – because of a series of exam controversies. The biggest of these was the decision to use an algorithm to use schools' past performances to change some pupils' grades when exams were first scrapped during the 2020 lockdown. After public protests from pupils and teachers – and a vote of no confidence being tabled in the education secretary of the day – 124,000 exam results were reinstated. So who was that education secretary, who survived that vote on his future only after U-turning on the original policy? It was the current First Minister, John Swinney. If these exam results are signs that a mess is being cleared up, his successor could argue that much of the untidiness is of her boss's making.
The Independent
17 minutes ago
- The Independent
Man United fans say ‘enough is enough' ahead of new protest
A Manchester United supporters' group, The 1958, has announced a new protest against the Glazer family and Sir Jim Ratcliffe. The protest will take place on 17 August, marching to Old Trafford before the Premier League opener against Arsenal, with banners reading 'Jim Can't Fix This'. The group criticises the Glazers' two decades of ownership and their 'debt mountain', stating that 'enough is enough'. They accuse Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who acquired a 28.94 per cent stake and operational control in February, of being 'complicit' in the club's ongoing issues by aligning with the Glazers. Ratcliffe previously indicated in March that he would consider leaving if he faced the same level of abuse directed at the Glazer family.
Telegraph
18 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Labour's decision to close the Fleming Fund is a false economy that puts our national security at risk
Health emergencies rarely respect borders or budgets. As I write, the world is facing an antibiotic emergency, with bacteria rapidly evolving resistance to the treatments we depend on to counter infectious diseases. Without effective antibiotic treatments, global health and the global economy are defenceless against the likes of pneumonia and sepsis. Antibiotics are the infrastructure of modern medicine, making chemotherapy, caesarean sections and hip replacements possible. More than 1.1million people die across the world every year because of antibiotic resistance, including 35,000 in the UK alone. These trends are increasing and inter-generational, with deaths in children tripling in the last three years. For the last decade, the UK has been at the forefront of global efforts to tackle the wider threat posed by antimicrobial resistance (AMR). While antibiotic resistance poses the single biggest threat to modern medicine, AMR points to a serious problem for all types of antimicrobial agents – antifungals, antivirals, and antiparasitics – threatening to reverse all the significant gains we've made against HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis. The UK's Fleming Fund has been a bulwark against such threats: building laboratory capacity in 25 low- and-middle-countries to detect emerging AMR outbreaks, allowing for proactive, data-driven responses before they escalate into global crises. Among many other things, the Fleming Fund has tripled the genomic sequencing capacity across the entire African continent – which even pivoted to detect Covid-19 variants. The UK government's decision to shut down the Fleming Fund is a false economy and directly puts our national security at risk. It will cost lives, as well as precious GDP that could be spent on frontline NHS services. If we are to learn any lessons at all from Covid-19, it should be that we cannot afford to cut corners when it comes to preventing and preparing for inevitable pathogenic threats. Bold investment to protect against AMR Decisions made today will directly impact our ability to counter and contain AMR pandemics in the very near future. When I was Chancellor in 2023, the Treasury recognised the economic health ramifications of AMR, and the UK government commissioned economic studies to better understand the risks and opportunities. The Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation found that if AMR resistance accelerates in line with poorer-performing countries, the world faces an additional seven million deaths globally by 2050. The Center for Global Development then estimated that economically, this would wipe $1.7 trillion annually off global GDP by 2050 and it will cost $175 billion extra a year for health systems to treat people. Country-level estimates released recently estimate that the British economy would be $59 billion smaller in this scenario and the UK would spend an additional $2.8 billion a year treating superbugs. $296 billion and $188 billion would be wiped off the US and EU economies respectively. In contrast, this research shows that there would be large economic benefits to the UK and elsewhere if we invest in improving the treatment of infections. With the UK economy facing significant challenges and the NHS workforce facing rising pressures, now is the time to act boldly and invest proactively to protect against AMR. Whilst the UK alone cannot solve AMR, the UK can and should leverage its world-leading technical expertise and diplomatic leadership through the Fleming Fund, its Special Envoy on AMR, Dame Sally Davies, and other global investments in AMR. Even in a world where only 0.3 per cent of gross national income (GNI) is earmarked for international aid funding, there must be a budget line for AMR. If we are to drive economic growth and build resilience against health threats at home and abroad, we need decisive action with investments that put health security first. With an evolved Fleming Fund, we can mitigate against the worst effects of AMR by supporting research and development of new antibiotics, increasing access to treatments in countries where lack of access accelerates resistance, embedding large-scale education and training programmes to ensure the sustainable and responsible use of existing antibiotics, and harnessing AI for diagnostic tests and surveillance for the UK and the countries most severely impacted by AMR. A world without the Fleming Fund puts even greater pressure on UK government and the life sciences sector to find new ways to prepare for the pandemics we already detect and those we are yet to detect, to safeguard UK health and economic security. Now is the time for the government to step up.
