JEFF PRESTRIDGE: Jeremy Hunt’s £1,000-a-year booster for pensions are part of a radical plan to turbocharge the UK economy

Jeremy Hunt’s array of pension reforms, announced last night, are a welcome dash of sunlight in greyish economic skies.

We should endorse and embrace them – and then ensure the Government makes them happen as soon as possible. They are in the nation’s best interests, our best financial interests.

Of course, it is the prospect of a £1,000-a-year increase in retirement income as a result of these reforms that has grabbed all of the headlines – and rightly so. After all, we all need some good news to counter the financial hardship caused by stubborn inflation and higher taxes.

Yet these radical changes go far beyond the gains they could make to the rag bag of work pensions that we have collected over the years as we have changed jobs.

For far too long, far too many of the work pension funds that our retirements are dependent upon have not really been fit for purpose.

JEFF PRESTRIDGE: Jeremy Hunt’s array of pension reforms, announced last night, are a welcome dash of sunlight in greyish economic skies

Not necessarily because of poor investment management, but because they are too small, expensive to administer, too conservative in where they are invested – and hamstrung by a battery of onerous regulations.

A key part of Hunt’s radical reforms is to bring many of these pension schemes together, creating superfunds that then have the muscle to invest in productive assets such as fledgling businesses, vital infrastructure and private equity. It’s a bold idea that could pave the way for a genuine savings revolution in this country.

By ensuring more of our pension funds are invested in exciting new British companies – in areas such as fintech and healthcare – his reforms could help reignite an economy.

It would also help reduce our dependency on overseas capital (from the likes of China) for the infrastructure that makes the economy tick over.

Yes, this plan could end up putting the great back in Great Britain: more jobs, more British companies leading the world in new areas of science and cutting-edge technology, more economic growth, bigger returns on our savings – and a pension fund industry working in the best interests of the country.

It’s win, win, win.

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