The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has laid out its single departmental plan for the next four years, in order to help people increase savings and financial security in later life.

The document reveals DWP’s plans to deliver a simpler system, get more people into workplace pension schemes and protect low income pensioners.

Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Pensions, Guy Opperman, will lead the DWP’s initiatives, many of which were set out in the Auto Enrolment Review at the end of 2017, while more details are set be revealed in the upcoming pensions white paper.

Commenting on the government’s plans, Aegon head of pensions, Kate Smith, said: “The DWP’s objective of helping more people into work goes hand-in-hand with its auto-enrolment policy. More people in employment means more people having access to a pension, and more importantly to an employer pension contribution.”

However, Smith suggested that the rather than waiting until the mid-2020s to introduce this change, the DWP should be looking to implement it within four years.

Employees participating in a workplace pension increased from 15.1m in 2015, to 16.2m in 2016, and plans to lower the automatic enrolment threshold to 18 will benefit a further 900,000 young people, according to the government.

Despite this, the government has been criticised for not doing enough in its efforts to extend auto-enrolment to the self-employed, but Smith believes the government are taking it seriously.

She said: “Extending auto-enrolment to the self-employed will be a hard nut to crack, but it’s good that the government is taking this seriously. The self-employed, are an incredibly diverse group, but a solution must be found to stop this growing group missing out and the pension gap between them and employees widening.”

The plans also reiterate the government’s intention to publish a Pensions White Paper, strengthening the powers of The Pensions Regulator, although does not give details as to when this will happen.

“The latest defined benefit shocks, including the Carillion insolvency with its grossly underfunded DB scheme, demonstrates that the Regulator needs more powers to better protect members’ pensions. Hopefully the forthcoming defined benefit White Paper will tackle this.

“Another area worth exploring is how to give providers and schemes more powers to protect members against pension scams by allowing them to block suspicious transfers”, Smith added.

In addition, the document confirms that there will be no changes to the pensions triple lock in this parliament, a measure the Conservative party said it was going to get rid of in June 2017’s snap election.

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