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Nigel Stanley

Nigel Stanley

I’m the TUC’s Head of Campaigns and Communications, and have been working at the TUC since 1994. I manage campaigning, media relations, parliamentary lobbying, publications and event organisation. As I work in communications and public affairs, my blogging is likely to range widely, but superficially.

If I have a specialist subject, it’s pensions. I have led a lot of the TUC’s work on implementing the Pensions Commission proposals. I have been a Trustee Member of the Nest Corporation.

In the past, I’ve freelanced in public affairs, research and journalism, including with the European Commission, Labour Party and a number of MPs. I did research, press and campaign management at the House of Commons in the 80’s and early 90’s, first for Robin Cook and then for Bryan Gould. Before that I was Organising Secretary of the Labour Co-ordinating Committee from its launch in 1978. I play ska/jazz bass guitar with the Skamonics and have part-ownership of a canal boat.

  • Politics

    Tracking public opinion on the cuts

    13th January 2012 — Filed under: Politics

    Nigel Stanley Nigel Stanley

    Regular readers will know that I have been following polling on spending cuts. YouGov regularly ask exactly the same set of questions. This allows us to track how public opinion is moving. While the precise wording of the question can make a big difference, especially in complex areas that are not the stuff of everyday conversation, tracking the same question can give a valuable insight into how opinion is moving as the same question bias will be present in every response.

    I’ve not published any graphs for some time as public opinion was pretty constant for most of last year. People obsess over short term changes in voting intention, but these are often due to the natural variability in any survey or represent a short-term response to whatever is in the news. The truth is that not much happened on the opinion front for most of last year.

    But there are some signs of a slight move. Unfortunately it goes in the wrong direction. But it’s not huge, and the government are still losing important parts of their argument, while still ahead on the need for cuts.

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  • Pensions & Investment

    Robert Peston’s peculiar public sector pensions story

    5th January 2012 — Filed under: Pensions & Investment

    Nigel Stanley Nigel Stanley

    It may be a quiet news day today, but that does not explain Robert Peston’s curious report, first on the Today programme and now on his blog, on public sector pensions. This claims – based on the work of John Ralfe:

    The increase in the normal retirement age from 60 to 67 for public sector workers has not led to significant savings in the cost of public-sector pensions.

    The story is odd in a number of ways. We can wonder why the BBC’s Business Editor is reporting on a non-business story in which he has not been much  involved before – unlike say John Moylan, their industry correspondent who has covered the story in depth. It is also strange that the BBC is covering research that has not – as far as we can tell – been published. It is certainly not on Mr Ralfe’s website.

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  • Pensions & Investment

    Progress on short service refunds

    15th December 2011 — Filed under: Pensions & Investment

    Nigel Stanley Nigel Stanley

    Once upon a time, long, long ago the vast majority of workplace pensions were final-salary defined benefit schemes run by trustees. Everyone could agree that periods of short membership of such schemes were an administrative headache all round. The law therefore allowed schemes to give employees their contributions back if they left before two years service, and to give the employer theirs back too.

    Today workplace pension provision is very different. More people are paying into defined contribution workplace pensions than defined benefit pensions. Some defined contribution schemes are run as occupational schemes with trust based governance, but most are contract-based. These are provided by a commercial pensions company and cannot make short service refunds as this provision is only available to trust-based schemes.

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  • Pensions & Investment

    Difference between CPI and RPI increases to 1.4%

    30th November 2011 — Filed under: Pensions & Investment

    Nigel Stanley Nigel Stanley

    The Office for Budget Responsibility has increased its forecast for the long run difference between the CPI and RPI inflation measures to 1.4 per cent. Previously they thought it would be 1.1 per cent.

    One of the government’s attacks on public sector pensions is to change the way that pensions in payment are linked to prices. In the past they have gone up in line with the retail price inflation (RPI) inflation measure. In future they are linking pensions to the consumer price inflation (CPI) measure.

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  • Pensions & Investment

    The Autumn Statement and pensions

    29th November 2011 — Filed under: Pensions & Investment

    Nigel Stanley Nigel Stanley

    There are four items of note on pensions if we include the delay in auto-enrolment announced yesterday. Today we also learnt of a rise in the state pension age, the uprating of the state pension and a dog that did not bark.

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  • Pensions & Investment

    First they come for public sector pensions …

    28th November 2011 — Filed under: Pensions & Investment

    Nigel Stanley Nigel Stanley

    Government supporters continuously argue that any cut to public sector pensions can be justified as things are worse in the private sector.

    But to make pension provision in the public sector look like those in the private sector we would need to expel two in three public sector workers from their scheme, as well as giving top public servants much bigger pensions.

    But at least something was being done about the appalling state of private sector pensions with the introduction of pensions auto-enrolment next year, which compels employers to contribute to a pension unless the worker opts out.

    But there are now reliable reports, particularly this one in yesterday’s Sunday Telegraph, that the Chancellor will either delay or abandon auto-enrolment for small businesses in the Autumn Statement on Tuesday.

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  • Economics

    The strange economic arguments behind the EU referendum calls

    24th October 2011 — Filed under: Economics

    Nigel Stanley Nigel Stanley

    As I write MPs are debating a call – mainly from the Eurosceptic right – for a referendum on EU membership.

    Of course there are many arguments that can be put for a referendum (you can read here for one Labour MP’s take) but the clearest new argument that seems to be coming from the right was put by Bernard Jenkin on the Today programme this morning  . This is that EU rules are preventing us from taking the measures that we need if we want to restore growth.

    But there’s a fallacy here.

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  • Pensions & Investment

    Daily Mail fail on local government pension costs

    13th October 2011 — Filed under: Pensions & Investment

    Nigel Stanley Nigel Stanley

    Not for the first time the Daily Mail want you to believe that a quarter of your council tax pays for pensions.

    I explain why this is deeply misleading in a post on our new Pensions Justice campaign website.

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  • Economics

    Samuel Brittan joins the calls for real bank reform

    23rd September 2011 — Filed under: Economics

    Nigel Stanley Nigel Stanley

    The TUC said  that the Vickers Commission on banking reform had been asked the wrong question. Its remit was to make the banks safe, but it needed to go wider than that and set out how to make them useful.

    In our view part of the answer should be establishing new sources of credit for businesses through new institutions and a properly resourced green investment bank.

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  • Pensions & Investment

    John Hutton is confused and confusing on pensions

    16th September 2011 — Filed under: Pensions & Investment

    Nigel Stanley Nigel Stanley

    According to the FT (£) John Hutton has said:

    Trade unions are suffering from a “fundamental misunderstanding” in arguing that public sector pensions are affordable without reform …

    Lord Hutton said the figures “assume we have successfully implemented the reforms” that he recommended. “The fundamental mistake the trades unions are making is that the chart assumes that the reforms have taken place,” he told the Financial Times. “They are the post reform costs. But people are still choosing the facts that most suit them from the report and then torturing the data until it confesses. That chart does not show that public sector pensions are sustainable as they stand. If they were, I would not have made 27 recommendations for fundamental change”.

    But this cannot be right, as I will explain.

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