Pensions and IFAs - who needs one?

[IR35 Avoider]

No, you cannot, certainly with Scottish Widows, which I mentioned in my first post.
Can you really hold stuff like Blackrock Absolute Alpha, ML Gold and General, Allianz BRIC Stars, energy funds, commodity ETFs etc. in your stakeholder pension?
These are not disguised index tracker funds, or worse, like most of the crummy funds available in stakeholder pensions. SW don't even have a general emerging markets fund available in their stakeholder range.
I don't have a problem in paying a tiny management fee for superior performance.
I agree actively managed funds don't always beat trackers, but if you research and choose carefully you can beat them by quite some margin with a specialist fund, especially with market conditions like they are now.

Dude69, I will be mainly investing in OEICs and the odd ETF, not going to be trading very frequently, and unlikely to be doing much with individual stocks.
Nice to have the choice to though.

I agree that you cannot get the type of funds you are interested in a stakeholder pension. What I tried to say (perhaps not clearly enough) is that the type of funds that charge 0.5% or less are, in my opinion, the only ones worth investing in, and you mostly can get those in a stakeholder. As far as I'm concerned a pension only has to offer about four different funds to give access to everything I need. But clearly I'm coming at things from a different angle to you.

if you research and choose carefully you can beat them by quite some margin with a specialist fund

An extremely controversial statement that contradicts economic theory as well as the advice of every investment book I've ever read. (Having said that, I diverge from orthodoxy by believing in valuation-based timing, so each to his own religion.)

I don't have a problem in paying a tiny management fee for superior performance.

It's impossible to know, even with hindsight, if you've had superior performance due to expertise. (No, the actual returns achieved don't prove anything.) I just mention this to put into context the challenge you're setting for yourself, if you want to locate superior performance before it happens.