Political Monitor

Excerpt from Political Monitor for APSCO for the week 10/5/2010

What's being said in Government

Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition Unveiled

On the evening of May 11, David Cameron entered No10 as the UK's new Prime Minister. He entered as the head of a formal coalition government, with LibDem leader Nick Clegg as his Deputy Prime Minister - and a combined Tory-LibDem majority in the House of Commons. Both parties will sit alongside one another on the Government benches with a total of 363 seats.

George Osborne becomes Chancellor of the Exchequer

George Osborne was appointed as Chancellor of the Exchequer on the 12th May 2010. Born and educated in London, Osborne studied modern history at Oxford University. After a short spell as a freelance journalist, he joined the Conservative Research Department in 1994.
Before becoming Shadow Chancellor, he served as Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury and Shadow Economic Secretary, as well as sitting on the Public Accounts Select Committee.

Junior Treasury positions:

Financial Secretary to the Treasury: Mark Hoban MP
Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury: David Gauke MP
Economic Secretary to the Treasury: Justine Greening MP

Vince Cable appointed Business, Innovation and Skills Secretary

The Liberal Democrats' former Shadow Chancellor Vince Cable has been appointed Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills.

Dr Cable said that the government will work in a different way to achieve its goals: "We have a coalition, we have a collaboration and it's symbolised in many ways by this Department."

He listed the key challenges as being:

Making difficult choices to reduce the deficit
Providing assistance on jobs
Creating a longer term vision for the UK economy

Mark Prisk, who prior the election was shadow minister for small business and John Hayes who shadowed the further education brief have also joined the BIS team as Ministers of State.

What stakeholders are saying

Employer-sponsored pension scheme membership drops

New analysis from the Office for National Statistics shows that 50 per cent of UK employees were members of an employer-sponsored pension scheme in 2009, a drop from 55 per cent membership in 1997 when the series began.

Analysis from Pension Trends reveals that there was a drop in the proportion of employees with occupational pensions between 1997 and 2009, from 46 per cent to 33 per cent for defined benefit (salary-related) schemes and from 9 per cent to 6 per cent for defined contribution (money purchase) schemes. This was partially offset by an increase in the proportion of employees with employer-sponsored personal pensions, including stakeholder pensions.

Figures also reveal:

In 2009, 66 per cent of UK employees in an employer-sponsored pension scheme were contracted out of the Second State Pension, formerly SERPS
In 2008, 45 per cent of self-employed men working full time in Great Britain belonged to a personal pension scheme, compared with 64 per cent in 1998/99.

Public administration, defence and social security is the sector with the highest proportion of employee pension scheme membership and on the other end of the scale the lowest sector is accommodation and food services. The lower their weekly earnings, the less likely full-time employees are to belong to an employer-sponsored pension scheme, and the converse applies with employees with higher earnings more likely to belong.

All insights