Recommendation 13

HM Treasury told us it has not yet performed an evaluation of its reforms. In its 2011 report on public service pensions, the Committee noted that increasing the amount that employees have to contribute to pension schemes could result in more people opting out of their pensions and having to rely on means-tested benefits, leading to extra costs to the public purse, and that important implications of this kind needed to be evaluated and understood. We asked whether the government has undertaken any such evaluation since the 2011–2015 reforms. HM Treasury told us that it had not done any post-implementation evaluation of those reforms, including evaluation of the impact on individuals and whether they are more or less likely to need to access benefits.28 We also asked whether HM Treasury had undertaken any evaluation linking pensions and trends in economic outcomes across different generations. HM Treasury told us it would consider this as part of any evaluation undertaken in future.29