UK – Bringing forward the launch of the UK's single-tier state pension will allow it to "support the roll-out of automatic enrolment", pensions minister Steve Webb has said.

In a written statement to parliament, Webb confirmed Sunday's announcement by chancellor George Osborne that the state pension reforms would be in place by 2016, as initially envisaged when the Department for Work & Pensions (DWP) published its White Paper on the matter in 2011.

He said the initial announcement for an April 2017 date was a result of the delay in publishing January's Green Paper.

"However, given the positive response to our White Paper, we looked again to see if it would be possible to return to our original timetable and to deliver reform as soon as possible, to support the rollout of automatic enrolment into workplace pensions and provide certainty for both individuals and their pension schemes at the earliest opportunity," Webb said.

One of the arguments in favour of state pension reform has been that the single payment, independent from means-testing, would allow pension savers to understand their state pension benefit, in turn making the necessity for additional pension saving through auto-enrolment easier to understand.

Malcolm McLean, consultant at Barnett Waddingham, expressed his surprise at the revised introduction date for the new flat-rate pension.

"There is no reference to the operational problems that the abolition of contracting-out now a year earlier than expected may cause for employers, while claiming that in relation to the employees affected 90% will, on reaching state pension age in the first 20 years of the single tier, receive more state pension than the additional National Insurance (NI) they pay," he said.

The National Association of Pension Funds yesterday questioned whether the "very tight" revised timeframe would allow the changes to be delivered on time.

Chief executive Joanne Segars said: "If the government gets it wrong, then this runs the risk of sparking a fresh round of final salary pension closures in the private sector."

In other news, the Office of National Statistics (ONS) has published the first data for two new inflation indices, with Towers Watson recommending trustees seek legal advice on whether they must continue to use the retail prices index (RPI) now that it is no longer a national statistic.

According to the ONS, RPI Jevons (RPIJ) inflation stood at 2.6% in February, down 0.1 percentage points over January had it published the statistic at that time.

The decrease in inflation was mirrored by the RPI, which at the end of February stood at 3.3% – a rate many pension funds would still need to employ as a means of uprating inflation.

John Ball, head of UK pensions at Towers Watson, said: "It will often be clear that scheme rules require pensions to continue to be increased with RPI, but trustees should get legal advice where it is not obvious how their rules interact with the recent proliferation of price indices.

"In some cases, the waters could potentially be muddied further now that RPI is no longer a national statistic.

"Unlike with RPI, however, pension increases in line with RPIJ may not be enough to satisfy the legislation at times when [consumer prices index] inflation is higher."

The ONS today also published its first calculation of a new measure of consumer prices indexation (CPI).

CPIH will take account of owner-occupier housing, as announced in November.

CPIH inflation was, at 2.6%, 0.2 percentage points below CPI.

However, both measures decreased by 0.1 percentage points month on month.

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