Former shadow pensions minister Jack Dromey dies aged 73

Dromey’s family confirmed on Friday that he had passed away suddenly. He was elected as a Labour MP in 2010, and served as shadow pensions minister from January 2018 until January 2021. Dromey was replaced by Matt Rodda, MP for Reading East, in Labour’s January reshuffle, subsequently joining the party’s Cabinet Office team.

Dromey vowed upon taking up his role as shadow pensions minister to support workers “robbed of their pensions by greedy bosses”. In 2018, he urged the government to leverage contracts it had awarded to Hewlett Packard Enterprise to persuade the company to protect pensioners who were seeing inflation eat into their benefits.

While Dromey was praised over the weekend by many as a dogged defender of workers’ rights, he is also remembered for his willingness to co-operate with the government on a number of pension matters. Pensions minister Guy Opperman took to Twitter to express how Dromey “exemplified cross-party working” in the House of Commons.

“We would meet and talk policy and plans every few weeks,” Opperman wrote. “We did not agree on everything, but always disagreed as friends. He was utterly crucial in getting the pension schemes bill and other legislation through parliament.”

The former shadow minister supported Opperman’s efforts in driving forward the pensions dashboards initiative, and also offered his support for collective defined contribution schemes.

“My wife often comments that I text him way too much,” the minister quipped to parliament during a debate on the pension schemes bill in 2020, in which he cited Dromey’s support for CDC legislation.

Former pensions minister Steve Webb echoed Opperman’s praise for Dromey’s willingness to work with other parties, crediting the former shadow minister for having played “a key role in building the cross-party consensus” for CDC.

“In opposition, it is always easy simply to oppose whatever the government does, and it can take political courage to agree with the government,” the now LCP partner told Pensions Expert.

“But in this case, Jack Dromey’s willingness to put aside ‘tribal’ differences meant that positive pension reform could move ahead, and he deserves much credit for his role in this process.”

Dromey campaigned for victims of pensions scams, supporting a cross-party amendment to the pension schemes bill that aimed at protecting people from risky transfers and improving the provision of advice. He also advocated for stronger consideration of environmental, social and governance factors in pensions.

He is survived by Harriet Harman, the MP for Camberwell and Peckham, and their three children.