• Ernst & Young LLP, The Paragon, Victoria Street, Bristol, BS1 6BX
• Parking is not provided.
• Tea and coffee from 5.30 p.m. for 6 p.m. start.

Looking back at the reforms enacted by the Conservative government in 1986 it is clear that they represented an inflexion point in the long-term development of Britain’s pension system. Often, the reforms are identified as the defining moment in the ‘neoliberalising’ of pensions in Britain. Yet, though it is probably fair to say that this was the aim of the architects of change, in fact they were profoundly disappointed by the reforms enacted. In this talk the aims of these reformers are unpicked and we explore the means by which they found themselves thwarted and forced to implement changes which they themselves described as creating ‘the worst of worlds’ in British pensions.

Biography

Professor Pemberton is an expert on Britain’s postwar politics and governance. Author of Volume 2 of the Official History of the Civil Service, 1983-1997 (to be published in 2020), he was until this month Principal Investigator on the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s ‘Thatcher’s Pension Reforms’ project, and he is currently writing a book on the history and legacy of those reforms. Before becoming an academic he was a business analyst in the life and pensions sector and worked for a number of firms in Bristol between 1985 and 1996.