Care England responds: We fully support the announcement of a collective pension scheme for care workers

Care England has welcomed today’s announcement by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Yvette Cooper, in her speech to the Labour Party Conference, setting out plans to better support and value the social care workforce, including a new collective pension scheme for care workers.

Professor Martin Green OBE, Chief Executive of Care England, said:

“Care workers spend their whole working lives planning, protecting and providing for other people’s futures. Today, government confirmed it will finally do the same for theirs, and Care England fully supports it.

Our analysis with COHIBL found that pension scheme members in this sector are around 20% more likely to retire below the minimum living standard than workers in other industries, and that’s before counting everyone who’s opted out altogether. That’s the picture a collective pension scheme can now start to fix, and fixing it means care can finally become the career people build a whole life on, not just a job they leave.

The Prime Minister said yesterday that he’s sorry his profession let ours down for so long, and that he won’t leave the job without changing things for care workers. That’s exactly the kind of ambition this sector needs, and Care England is ready to match it. We have done extensive research into the pressures facing this workforce, and we have credible, evidence-based policy solutions ready for government to act on, just as it has today. We’re ready to build on that with government, starting now.”

Today’s pension announcement is one of a wave of measures on social care unveiled during Labour’s party conference this week. Care England welcomes the direction of travel, and today’s announcement in particular, while recognising that some of the wider proposals will need closer thought before their full impact on people who draw on care, and the providers who deliver it, becomes clear. Care England’s fuller response to the conference’s wider reform agenda, given yesterday in reaction to the Prime Minister’s speech, is available here.

Note to Editors

Care England and COHIBL, “White Paper: Reducing Pension Opt-Out Rates in the Care Sector,” February 2025, p.12. The paper’s Retirement Living Standards table reports that 57.4% of healthcare sector pension scheme members are on track to retire below the minimum living standard, against 47.8% across all other industries (data pooled across several pension providers, averaged across members who remained active contributors, excluding opt-outs). The 20% figure is the relative difference between these two rates (57.4 ÷ 47.8 ≈ 1.20, a 20.1% relative increase), distinct from the 9.6 percentage point gap between them.