Sir Steve Webb is widely regarded as one of the most effective pensions ministers Britain has ever had. In this first episode of Econ to Icon, Paul Johnson and Michael Kell sit down with the man who drove through the new state pension, helped introduce automatic enrolment, and has spent his post-political career holding the system to account from the outside. Steve is characteristically direct, self-deprecating and thoughtful throughout — on both the substance of pension policy and the more personal questions about career, identity and what it means to do work that matters.

Steve began his working life as an economist at the Institute for Fiscal, before moving into academia and then spending 18 years as a Lib Dem MP. The final five of those years were spent as Pensions Minister in the coalition government of 2010 to 2015, working alongside Iain Duncan Smith and negotiating with a sceptical Treasury to push through reforms that changed retirement income for millions of people.

In this conversation, we explore:

• How Steve got interested in economics and what drew him to pensions specifically
• What it actually takes to get a major policy reform through government — the coalition dynamics, the Treasury negotiations, and the role of personal relationships
• The triple lock, automatic enrolment, and the new state pension: how those reforms happened and why they mattered
• The WASPI issue — and Steve's candid reflection on what he would have done differently
• Losing his seat in 2015 at 49: what it felt like to lose not just a job but an identity, and how he rebuilt
• His post-political career at Royal London and now Lane Clark & Peacock — and how he used his platform to uncover £850 million in underpaid state pensions
• What economics training actually gives you when you're making real decisions under pressure
• What he's learned about career transitions, reinvention, and finding work that genuinely fits

Hosts: Paul Johnson (Frontier Economics / Queen's College Oxford / IFS) and Michael Kell (career coach, michaelkellcoaching.com)

If this conversation got you thinking about your own career — whether you're just starting out, looking to move up, or wondering about a change of direction — Michael offers one-to-one coaching. Find out more at www.michaelkellcoaching.com.

Paul recent books: Sunday Times bestseller Follow the Money: How Much Does Britain Cost? and Challenging Inequalities: How We Got Stuck and Where We Go Next