Pensions Bill [HL]

Baroness Drake Excerpts

Tuesday 15th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Drake]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Freud, for introducing the Bill and I acknowledge his willingness to discuss matters. We are pleased that the Government are pushing ahead with the automatic enrolment of workers into workplace pensions, thereby continuing the reform programme, introduced under the Labour Government, which commanded widespread consensus across political parties and stakeholders. We want to work with the Government to maintain that consensus and to build on it. However, we believe that they should not proceed with the accelerated timetable for equalising the state pension age; that the proposals for the threshold of earnings which trigger the automatic enrolment of workers into a pension have the potential to detract from enabling low to moderate earners to save; and we have concerns about the employers’ self-certification and occupational pensions indexation.

In the face of increasing life expectancy, I accept that raising the state pension age is part of the solution to maintaining a sustainable state pension system that supports private pension saving. I accept that when improvements in life expectancy accelerate at a greater rate than anticipated, it becomes necessary to revisit existing plans. As a principle, however, the manner and timing of any increase in the state pension must give people fair and proper notice and sufficient time to adjust, and ensure that the impact is not unfair and disproportionate for particular groups. The acceleration of the timetable to achieve the equalisation of pension age for women and men, from April 2020 to November 2018, does not meet that principle and breaks the promise made in the coalition agreement not to start increasing the state pension age to 66 for women before 2020. The Government should honour the 2020 timetable for equalisation and focus the acceleration of the timetable for the state pension age to rise from 65 to 66 for both men and women to between 2020 and 2022

Let me state the nature of the unfairness. Under the Government’s proposals, some half a million women will receive their state pension at least 12 months later than they had previously been advised. For 300,000 women born between December 1953 and October 1954, this delay will increase to between one and a half to two years. For 33,000 women born between 6 March and 5 April 1954, it increases to two years. For them, the loss in state pension is around £10,000; for those on full pension credit, the loss is closer to £15,000. These women, with five years’ notice of the timetable change, have little time to prepare for their income loss, which is neither fair nor reasonable. The impact of the accelerated timetable is too harsh on women in their later 50s, the poorest of whom will have to wait longer for their pension credit. The argument that women live longer than men, so draw their state pension for longer, is not mitigation for women in their late 50s being given so little time to adjust to their loss of income. It is simply not realistic for women in their later 50s to be able to save sufficiently to address the loss. The introduction of the employer duty to enrol workers into a pension scheme will not conclude until 2017, just 12 months before the start of the move from 65 to 66 in 2018 and 12 months after the start of the accelerated timetable in 2016.

Women in their later 50s are less likely to be in a pension scheme and more likely to be working part-time, earning low incomes. Many are inactive because of looking after family. Even the Government, in their report A Sustainable State Pension, concede that speeding up the pension age equalisation timetable will not significantly reduce the gap in the proportion of women aged 55 to 65 who are out of the labour market compared to men. Women in their later 50s have fewer savings: the median pension saving of a 56 year-old woman is just £9,100, almost six times lower than that of a man, which stands at £52,800. Although as a result of reforms introduced by the Labour Government, most women reaching state pension age in late 2018 will be entitled to a full basic state pension, they will still have a lower entitlement to additional state pension. Nearly 40 per cent of women approaching retirement are not part of an ongoing marriage so many cannot rely on their partner's income to cushion the financial loss.

In summary, women in their later 50s, for historic reasons of gender discrimination, will have lower state pension and private savings than men, will have earned less over their lifetime, may have been unable to join a workplace pension, had interrupted careers and are more likely to be carers. This inequality will remain and is exacerbated by the accelerated timetable, which does not give them sufficient time to prepare for their income loss. The fiscal benefit from the acceleration of the equalisation timetable will not impact on the deficit reduction in this Parliament. The savings will start to flow from 2016, when net borrowing is forecast to have fallen significantly.

We are pleased that the Government are pushing ahead with automatic enrolment, but the changes to the earnings threshold, which triggers a worker’s enrolment into a pension scheme, cause deep concern. The Government have set the threshold at £7,475 in 2011-12 earnings terms so that it is aligned with the threshold for income tax. However, the Government’s aspiration for the income tax threshold is to raise it to £10,190. If the threshold to trigger auto-enrolment were to rise to £10,190, it would exclude nearly 1 million workers per year from workplace pensions, 76 per cent of whom would be women, with the loss of £40 million of employer pension contributions. Consequently, of the group targeted to benefit from the workplace pension reform, 66 per cent would be men and only 34 per cent women. The earnings threshold for auto-enrolment should be set and maintained in relation to the national insurance threshold, not the income tax threshold. Raising it to £10,100 would not, if I may say so to the Minister, be a slight increase, but directly undermine the objective of enabling low and moderate earners to save, which is confirmed by the Government’s own impact assessment and the Paul Johnson review. Nearly half of those in the lowest earning group are in couples, where one works part time and the other full time. The Johnson review says:

“Many or most very low earners are women, who live in households with others with higher earnings and/or receive working tax credits. These may well be exactly the people who should be automatically enrolled”.

Yet we have a set of proposals that would exclude them.

A key principle of pension reform is to enable women to build up a pension in their own right. The higher the threshold for auto-enrolment, the less the reforms will work for women. Evidence also shows that earnings are not static and that for many workers, men and women, they can change significantly over their lifetime. Most low earners go on to earn more, so saving will still be very beneficial, because of the continuing contribution to their pension over their working life. The Johnson review presented a variety of evidence to show that relatively few people have persistently low earnings over their lifetime. If the threshold is raised to £10,190, it is not sufficient to say that the impact can be mitigated by those earning below this being allowed voluntarily to opt in. Inertia prevents people from saving, which is why we have these reforms. So it is really not credible to say that the lower paid still have to overcome these barriers but that those earning higher incomes would benefit from auto-enrolment—or asymmetric paternalism.

A higher threshold disregards how working-age benefits can make it pay to save. Individuals’ pension contribution is disregarded from income when calculating entitlement to tax credits. Just over one-third of those earning between £5,000 and £10,000 are in receipt of tax credits. That, for some, can produce an implied tax relief of 50 per cent to 60 per cent, which provides a very positive incentive to save.

The Bill provides for an employer to certify, subject to a regulatory test, that their company arrangements meet the requirements on minimum pension contributions. Although the Bill prescribes the powers of the Secretary of State in setting the test, our concern is that, in trying to accommodate the good employers, a compliance loophole is created for bad employers. The test is still subject to consultation, and there may be pressure to change further. Although the Johnson review asserts that under the proposed test, based on ONS figures, 92 per cent of workers would match the qualifying earnings, post auto-enrolment an incentive may have been created to reduce basic pay and arbitrage between the 8 per cent on the band of earnings test and the certificate of alternative test.

I must take the opportunity of this Bill to refer to the decision to use CPI as a measure of increase in the general level of prices, which is estimated to deliver—in estimates revised upwards by the Government—an £83 billion reduction to occupational scheme members’ pension benefits over the next 15 years. This change effects a switch of assets and benefits from scheme members to scheme sponsors but does not directly impact the public deficit. While one can see the merits in a change for a limited period, the permanent change will be felt even after the fiscal deficit is long gone. I say this against a background of concern over whether the CPI index is appropriately constructed, given the basket of goods that it captures, notwithstanding the merits or otherwise of an argument on the way in which the mean and the substitution effect is calculated.

The Bill allows employers to defer enrolling eligible workers into a pension for up to three months and consequently reduces annual employer pension contributions by some £150 million. Given that individuals have, on average, 11 different labour market interactions during their working life, this could add up to nearly three years of pension savings or a 7 per cent reduction in an individual’s fund. Will the Government be monitoring the impact of the three-month waiting period and how widespread the usage of that facility will be by employers? Finally, stakeholders need timetable and policy certainty so that they can understand and prepare. The Bill leaves a significant amount to regulation. Can the Minister therefore confirm in writing when the regulations will be available in draft?