Payment Accounts (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2018
Debate between Baroness Drake and Lord Bates(5 years, 5 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Lord Bates) (Con)
My Lords, as in the previous debate, this statutory instrument is part of the Treasury’s legislative programme which aims to ensure that there continues to be a functioning UK legislative and regulatory regime for financial services in the unlikely event that the UK leaves with neither a deal nor an implementation period.
The statutory instrument will fix deficiencies in UK law in the Payment Accounts Regulations to ensure that they continue to operate effectively post exit. The payment accounts directive had three main objectives: first, to improve the transparency and comparability of fees related to payment accounts; secondly, to facilitate the switching of those accounts; and, thirdly, to ensure access to payment accounts with basic features. The Payment Accounts Regulations 2015 transposed the directive into UK law.
Many noble Lords will be familiar with payment accounts, as they are the day-to-day bank or building society accounts that we use to hold funds, to make and receive payments, and to withdraw and deposit cash. In the UK, the most common form of payment account is a current account.
In a no-deal scenario, the UK would be outside the European Economic Area and the EU’s legal, supervisory and financial regulatory framework. The Payment Accounts Regulations 2015 therefore need to be updated to reflect this to ensure that the provisions work appropriately in a no-deal scenario.
The draft regulations are concerned mostly with removing references to the EU. Therefore, the impact on customers and businesses will be minimal. However, I will go into more detail on three changes to which it may be helpful to draw the Committee’s attention.
The first is that this draft instrument transfers the responsibility for making technical standards for customer documents setting out fees and charges associated with a payment account from the European Banking Association to the Financial Conduct Authority.
Secondly, the draft instrument removes the requirement for payment service providers to facilitate the cross-border opening of payment accounts. This means that payment service providers will no longer be required to provide certain information relating to a customer’s payment account—for example, direct debits or closing balance—or transfer a balance to an EU payment service provider when the customer wants to switch from a UK payment account to an EU payment account. Repealing this provision does not affect the ability of UK customers to open payment accounts abroad.
Lastly, the SI makes changes to the regulations governing payment accounts with basic features, which are more commonly known as basic bank accounts in the UK. For those who may not be familiar with this financial inclusion product, a basic bank account is a fee-free bank account, with no overdraft facility but which otherwise has the same features as a standard current account. The nine largest current account providers in the UK must offer these accounts to those who are unbanked in the UK or who are ineligible for a standard current account.
As the UK will no longer be a member of the EU’s single market for financial services after exit day, the instrument removes the requirement on the nine providers to offer these products to customers resident in the EU or to offer EU currency services on any basic bank account as standard. It will therefore be at their discretion whether to continue to offer basic bank accounts to customers resident in the EU after exit day or keep existing accounts of EU residents open.
The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee was concerned that, should the nine providers choose to make use of these changes and close the basic bank accounts of customers resident in the EU, customers would be placed into financial difficulty as a result. I assure the Committee that this is unlikely to be the case because the nine providers must give customers at least two months’ notice in writing if they plan to close the account, which should give customers adequate notice to open another account.
Furthermore, a customer’s right to a basic bank account is EU-wide, so these customers should be able to open a basic bank account in the member state in which they reside. The nine providers have also signed a 2014 agreement with the Treasury that makes clear that basic bank accounts are designed to help the less affluent and most vulnerable in our society. The Government therefore expect that providers will have due regard to the spirit of this agreement when making any changes to its basic bank account policy.
In summary, this Government believe that the proposed legislation is necessary to ensure that the Payment Accounts Regulations 2015 will continue to function appropriately if the UK leaves the EU without a deal or an implementation period. Most importantly, this means that fee-free basic bank accounts, which are a key financial inclusion product, remain available and robustly regulated to customers legally resident in the UK who are unbanked or ineligible for other payment accounts. I hope this introduction will have been helpful to noble Lords, and I commend the regulations to the House.
Baroness Drake (Lab)
My Lords, this SI is part of the series providing contingency planning for the no-deal Brexit scenario. The Payment Accounts Regulations 2015 established a right of access to a basic bank account with basic features for customers legally resident in the EU, which were fee-free for services in sterling, with EU currency services provided at a reasonable fee. The Explanatory Memorandum advises that this SI seeks to ensure that those regulations operate effectively in the UK in the event of no deal and continue to deliver the existing three main objectives of, first, transparency and comparability of fees on day-to-day payment transactions such as cash deposits, withdrawal and card payments; secondly, the facilitation of account-switching; and, thirdly, ensuring access to accounts with basic features for EU residents. Paragraphs 2.2 and 2.12 of the Explanatory Memorandum set out what I have just described.
Privacy and Electronic Communications (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2018
Debate between Baroness Drake and Lord Bates(5 years, 5 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Lord Bates) (Con)
My Lords, for most people in the UK, their largest financial asset will be their pension, which unfortunately makes pensions an attractive target for fraudsters. As I am sure the House is aware, pension scams have had devastating consequences. Scams can leave people to face retirement with limited income, unable to rebuild their pension savings. Cold calling is not only a nuisance but the most common method used to initiate pension fraud. I am aware of the strength of feeling on tackling cold calling from recent debates in this House and in Committee. According to Citizens Advice, the most recent statistics show that 97% of pension fraud cases brought to it originated from a cold call. That is why the Government are taking action to ban pensions cold calling.
Before we discuss the legislation I will present to the House today, allow me to briefly explain how the current system works. Currently, the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003, or PECR, permit firms to cold call consumers for marketing purposes, subject to a couple of exceptions: where the consumer has notified the caller that they do not wish to receive such calls, or has listed their number on the telephone preference service. The current regime therefore permits cold calling unless a consumer has proactively opted out.
The purpose of the legislation under discussion today is to amend PECR in order to much more tightly restrict firms from cold calling consumers on their pensions. It does so by creating an explicit opt-in regime prohibiting all such calls unless one of two tightly drafted exemptions applies. Importantly, the exemptions do not apply to so-called introducers. Introducers are the marketing firms which seek to establish “leads” which they pass to financial advice firms. It is introducers who undertake the majority of pensions cold calling.
The ban will make it clear to consumers that any pensions cold call they receive from an unknown caller is illegal and likely to be a scam call, so they should hang up. To help future-proof the regulations, the definition of,
“direct marketing in relation to pension schemes”,
in the SI has been drafted widely. This will help to ensure that we capture new activities which may evolve in future, as well as activities that we know scammers already use today.
So that the ban does not have an unnecessary or disproportionate impact on legitimate activities, the Government have provided two narrowly defined exemptions. The first is where the consumer has given consent to a caller to receive direct marketing calls on their pensions. This exemption has been included so that consumers seeking information on pension products are able to do so. The SI is fully in line with the GDPR, which sets a high standard for consent.
The second exemption is where the consumer,
“has an existing client relationship with the caller”,
such that they would expect to receive such calls. This is so that individuals are able to receive information about investment opportunities from firms with which they have a client relationship. Crucially, the exemptions apply only where the caller is authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority or is the trustee or manager of a pension scheme. This means that there are no circumstances in which introducers, as defined, are permitted to call consumers on their pensions.
As many noble Lords will be aware, a similar ban on cold calling by claims management companies was implemented through the Financial Guidance and Claims Act 2018, which was skilfully taken through your Lordships’ House by my noble friend Lord Young, who joins me on the Front Bench this evening. The present SI has been drafted so as to achieve a consistent approach to both bans. The ban will be enforced by the Information Commissioner’s Office, a world leader in the protection of information rights. The Information Commissioner’s Office has tough enforcement powers, which include fining offenders up to £500,000. From 17 December 2018, directors of companies making unlawful calls may be personally liable for penalties of up to £500,000.
The Government are working with partners across the public, private and charity sectors to ensure that news of the ban reaches as many people as possible. To support the industry to keep within the law, the Information Commissioner’s Office will publish updated guidance when the ban comes into force. I will take this opportunity to thank stakeholders across the industry and the third sector for their helpful comments on the drafting of the regulations through consultation over the summer. As a consequence, I am pleased to say that we have a set of regulations which our stakeholders can get behind.
In summary, the Government believe that the proposed legislation is necessary to tackle the scourge of pension scams and help protect customers and consumers from pension fraudsters. I hope that noble Lords will join me in supporting these regulations and I commend them to the House.
Baroness Drake (Lab)
My Lords, I welcome these regulations, which restrict firms in cold-calling individuals regarding their pension schemes. The Explanatory Memorandum was clear and helpful in setting matters out. This was a point of considerable concern during the passage of the Financial Guidance and Claims Act 2018, when the Government gave a commitment to ban cold calls on pensions. It is pleasing to see the product of that commitment in these regulations.
As we all know, the threat of pension scams—in fact, the threat of financial scams—is a growing problem. The scale of these unsolicited calls and the number of people impacted is alarming. The estimates from the Money Advice Service indicate that there are 250 million scam calls per annum. Most cases involving pension scams start with cold calling and if someone is scammed out of their pension savings, the effect can be not only devastating but lifelong and irreversible. Scams can originate from sources other than onshore cold callers—for example, from social media and offshore callers—but these regulations will make a significant contribution to protecting individuals. I acknowledge that there are many positives in the regulations. The definition of direct marketing set out in paragraph (5) of new Regulation 21B in relation to pension schemes has been drafted widely, which is helpful. Organisations which breach the ban may be liable to pay compensation to the victim, be subject to enforcement activity by the Information Commissioner’s Office and, as the Minister referred to, face a penalty of up to £500,000.
Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Claims Management Activity) Order 2018
Debate between Baroness Drake and Lord Bates(5 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Bates
That is something that I think the FCA would be liaising on. If it felt that its activities were aligned with a CMC then, as I mentioned earlier, that would mean it would have to continue to be regulated by the FCA. On the specific point, unless there is any inspiration on its way, I will write with clarification to the noble Lord.
The noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, asked if any action had been taken on CMCs doing their due diligence on data under GDPR. The FCA is in the process of updating and publishing its rules for the CMC regime. It will be working closely with the Information Commissioner’s Office, which is responsible for the oversight of data protection laws, to ensure that CMCs comply with the order, FCA rules and data protection legislation.
The noble Baroness asked whether the SRA was an effective regulator. The MoJ is responsible for the oversight of the SRA. The FCA and the SRA are currently reviewing their memorandum of understanding, and their conclusions will be published in due course. I think that covers most of the points.
Baroness Drake
Could the Minister clarify a point from one of my questions? Where an existing claims management company, authorised under the previous regime, transfers across to the FCA on the due date in April and is then subjected to the reauthorisation process but is not reauthorised, what happens in that instance to the caseload that it has been managing?
Lord Bates
They will be given 30 days to wind down their business in the event that that happens. I can write to the noble Baroness when I write to the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, and expand on that point if that would be helpful.
Baroness Drake
It is more about the consumer protection aspect that a group of people would be caught up in that, and I wondered who would carry on managing their cases. I am happy for the noble Lord to write to me about that.
Pensions Act 2011 (Consequential and Supplementary Provisions) Regulations 2014
Debate between Baroness Drake and Lord Bates(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Drake
My Lords, this may be an appropriate moment to intervene because I want to push the Minister on a couple of points. I have been trying to anticipate when he would be coming to the end of his remarks.
Perhaps I may go back to two points. First, Section 67 rights under the 1995 Act are pretty important rights that get people rather excited. The concern I was trying to express was that this seems to set the precedent that you can provide retrospective protection for schemes that have breached Section 67 rights and obligations. What level of assurance can the Minister give that this is not a precedent that could be used for undermining the strength of Section 67 in the future by giving retrospective protection?
Secondly, in terms of how this retrospective protection applies where schemes have breached Section 67, I should point out that the Government do not know which schemes have done this. They have just heard about this from the industry, so they are giving a sort of blanket assurance without knowing the number and type of breaches of Sections 67. If they do not meet the actuarial equivalence terms, it is not clear whether they will have to go back and redo it.
Thirdly, if they did it inadvertently, they probably did not do any actuarial equivalence exercise at the time. Is it therefore being said that they can do one with hindsight now, and can look back and say, “Had that been applied at the time”? It is quite important to get clarity on this Section 67 point, because there are lots of disputes and case law around it. It tends to get people who are interested in members’ benefits quite excited if there is an attempt to compromise it in some way.
On the flipping schemes, which are not protected in terms of access to the PPF until April 2015, I note that, as was said, if you have not paid the levy then the liability if your employer goes insolvent should not go to other levy payers. However, the issue is that it is a government responsibility, because the Government are obliged under the EU directive. I was looking for as firm an assurance as possible that, if an employer with a scheme that has to flip from DC to DB goes into insolvency before or up to April 2015, the Government will not walk away from giving some kind of protection to those schemes with DB benefits the members of which may now be caught outside the protection regime; hopefully there are none or, if there are, they are very tiny.
Lord Bates
I am grateful for those additional points. Let me try to answer them as best I can. It might be helpful if I wrote to the noble Baroness and shared those responses with the Committee. I realise that they are important issues.
To respond to the specific issue of Section 67 rights, the appropriate regulation is Regulation 8(3)(b). The Government believe that the protection is not undermined, because there must have been an actuarial equivalence. If they do not meet the actuarial equivalence requirements, they will have to go back and unpick them. In fact, the regulations introduce a new protection for members, which underpins the benefits. However, as I said, I shall seek further guidance on that and write to the noble Baroness and other Members of the Committee.
These draft regulations make modifications to existing primary legislation to provide supplementary and consequential measures to support the coming into force of the clarified definition of money purchase benefits in Section 29 of the Pensions Act 2011. I hope that I have set out for the Committee the rationale for these regulations and have responded to the matters raised. I commend these regulations to the Committee.
Automatic Enrolment (Earnings Trigger and Qualifying Earnings Band) Order 2014
Debate between Baroness Drake and Lord Bates(10 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Bates
My Lords, first, both the noble Baronesses referred to the speed with which we have gone through the Order Paper. In fact, that caught all sides on the hop, and apologies are due all round. The responsibility, of course, lies in the preceding orders going too speedily. However, I am grateful to both noble Baronesses, who, in the exchanges we have had over many sittings on the Pensions Bill, have demonstrated their incredible grasp and knowledge of these complex areas, and have spoken passionately about the impact upon women in particular. I will come to these points, and respond to them as best I can.
One of the key things I said in the concluding remarks of my speech was that we recognise that setting these thresholds is a balancing act and that there is no right or wrong answer. It is therefore right that there should be a debate and that it has become an annual debate. It is an affirmative instrument and therefore any changes that are made annually have to come before your Lordships’ House for consideration. That is the right way to do it.
The other point of context we need to acknowledge, which the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, was good enough to make, is that the figures for auto-enrolment, which I accept came out of the Turner commission, which in turn came out of the Pensions Act 2008 under the previous Government, have been impressive. Significant progress has been made in encouraging the right people to save for their retirement. In pursuing that, we are absolutely on common ground.
It might be helpful if I went through some of the figures that we have for the number of people affected. Raising the 2014-15 value of the automatic enrolment trigger from £9,440 to £10,000 will exclude around 170,000 individuals, of whom around 120,000—69%—are women. Raising the 2013-14 value of the automatic enrolment trigger from £8,105 to £9,440 excluded around 420,000 individuals, of whom 300,000—72%—are women. I am going back through these numbers because it is a rough way of getting back to the calculation made by the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, which the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, asked me whether I agreed with. Raising the 2013 value of the automatic enrolment trigger from £7,475 to £8,105 excluded around 100,000 people, 82% of whom were women. Finally, raising the 2011-12 value of the automatic enrolment trigger from £5,035—in 2006-07 terms—to £7,475 excluded 600,000 individuals, 78% of whom were women. If one calculates those figures, one begins to recognise the numbers that the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, presented to us.
However, it is not so simple as to say that 70,000 women would be in automatic enrolment if their part-time earnings were brought together. I realise that there is a big education job to be done here, because many women who are underneath the threshold need to realise that if they are above £5,772 in terms of the lower earnings limit, they can opt in and therefore get the benefits that would accrue from that.
Baroness Drake
Does the Minister agree that we do not ask the rest of the population to opt in to get the benefits of pension saving and an employer contribution? Why should we ask women to opt in to get the benefit, when all the evidence is that most people will not opt in? Why do we discriminate against lower earners in that way? We do not expect a £40,000-earning male to overcome his own inertia. Why do we expect a £9,000-earning woman to overcome her own inertia?
Lord Bates
I take the point, but the threshold needs to be drawn somewhere. That is the discussion that we are having. There has to be a threshold somewhere because, below a certain level, the benefits of saving will not be as acute for the retirement pension. The question that we are debating is where that threshold should be set. We are not saying that this is a gender issue; we are saying that it is a threshold and income issue.
The noble Baroness is perhaps being a little harsh on this Government’s record on auto-enrolment, but it is worth pointing out that we have also taken a very large number of people, mostly female, out of tax altogether. The rises in the personal allowance since 2010 have taken 2.7 million people out of paying tax. The majority of those people will be female. That is a very positive thing, but I accept that more needs to be done to encourage people to save for their retirement. The benefits of the 3% employer contribution, which the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, pointed to, will come when the scheme is fully implemented in 2018 and the thresholds and contribution levels increase. At the moment it is 1%, but it is very important that people engage at that 1% level so that their savings can rise as the employer contribution increases.
Of course, in addition to the employer contribution increasing, the employee contribution will rise, and many people who do not make pension savings point to the fact that affordability is the key issue that they are wrestling with.
Lord Bates
I do not think we disagree with that. I accept that you need to enrol in—to opt in to—the scheme. We are saying that you can opt in and get tax relief from the lower earnings limit of £5,772, and that your employer will have to do that from £10,000. Therefore, we agree on that. Persistent low earners tend to find that the state pension alone provides them with a retirement income similar to that which they would have had during their working life.
Baroness Drake
The noble Lord is arguing that if someone is poor all their life they can make do on the single tier and we are not obliged to give them the opportunity to build up a little capital—is that the policy of the coalition Government?
Lord Bates
The noble Baroness knows that is not our argument. We are encouraging people to save, as far as possible, but we recognise that savings, and how people spend their disposable income, is a choice. At what point does it become an automatic responsibility of the employer to enrol an employee in the scheme? That is what we are debating, not whether people are being encouraged to save. I hope that there is genuine cross-party agreement on this, coming out of the Turner commission, of which the noble Baroness was a distinguished member.
Of course, the whole objective is to increase savings across society. Thirteen million people are not saving enough for their retirement and we want that figure to improve. We want to ensure that as many people as possible are automatically enrolled. The Government believe that the decision on lower earnings is a decision for each person to take, and I hope they will take advantage of it.
Baroness Drake
The noble Lord is defending arguments that are untrue. Auto-enrolment does not work on the basis of it being a decision for individuals. They are put in, they have to come out. They have the choice to come out, but they are put in in the first place. These women are not getting the advantages of auto-enrolment. The point of inertia is that it is not based on informed choice; it is based on the assumption that the individual does this because it is in their best interest.
Lord Bates
We accept that. However, basically we are talking about the same issue: whether people have to opt out when they are put in an auto-enrolled scheme. They have the opportunity to decide to opt out. If they are above £5,772 they have the opportunity to opt in. I take the point that the threshold has to be set somewhere. Having looked at all the evidence, this is where the Government have come down—for this year. As the scheme gathers pace, more information will be available to us and we will be able to make that information available to your Lordships and have it influence decisions.
Baroness Drake
I do not want to be too difficult. However, the Secretary of State has stated clearly that this is driven by his view that people should not be auto-enrolled into pensions until they start paying tax. That is not doing a balancing act; that has been the Government’s consistent position since 2010. The Hansard record shows that I keep asking the question, “Are you going to keep tracking the tax threshold, because if you keep doing that you will exclude more and more women?”. That is not a balancing act. If you did a balancing act, you would say, “What is the balance between that approach and the number of women excluded?”.
The Government have locked themselves in, both by the Secretary of State’s statement and by their behaviour since 2010, when they said that people who do not pay tax should not have the advantage of auto-enrolment. The benefit of releasing them from a certain level of tax is reduced by the fact that they lose the employer’s contribution, and we are now getting to a point where the gain from the increase in the tax threshold is less than the loss of the 3% of the employer’s contribution. So over their lifetime, the low-paid person is actually worse off.
Pensions Bill
Debate between Baroness Drake and Lord Bates(10 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Drake
I thank my noble friend Lord Browne for his supporting contributions in this debate. I thank the Minister for his response but he has not actually answered my question—I did listen; perhaps I missed it but I do not think so—which was: can the Minister confirm that this Bill will give the Secretary of State the power to retrospectively change the terms of existing pension contracts to embrace any new quality or governance requirement? It is a pretty key point because it goes to the heart of what the Government can or cannot do unless they take those powers to themselves. A lot of people are quite interested in whether the Government are taking those powers so that when they decide what the quality and governance requirements are, they have the power to retrospectively apply them to existing pension contracts.
Lord Bates
Perhaps I can seek some clarification from the noble Baroness on the nature of her question; I apologise for not responding to it directly. The whole point of what we are introducing is that we are seeking to tackle the issue of the quality of schemes. Therefore it would stand to reason that if one is seeking to improve the quality of schemes, it would be wrong to disbar those who were in previous schemes from getting the benefits of those improved quality standards. That provision is therefore there: it will be necessary to enhance the quality of schemes. I might be missing something; I am sorry if I am.
Baroness Drake
The Minister has got the sentiment of my point. I was looking for firm clarification that the Bill gives the Secretary of State the power to put in place those quality and governance standards, once they are decided, to existing pension contracts, because they are contracts.
Lord Bates
The noble Baroness has a high degree of expertise in this area, which is respected on all sides of the Committee. I wonder if I could write to her on the specific point on which she is pressing me, with a response on the record. If she wishes to press it further, she can of course come back to the issue on Report.
Baroness Drake
I thank the noble Lord for his offer to write to me on the matter. Maybe having it in writing will be better, because the efficiency or ability of any requirements under the Bill will be heavily influenced by the extent to which they can retrospectively apply to existing pension contacts. However, if the noble Lord is going to write to me on that point, I will also deal with other matters.
We need to get a sense of perspective on this. Auto-enrolment potentially affects 20 million people in this country. The whole of the private sector workforce, when it is engaged in employment above a certain income level, is a huge community of people; it is a great statement of trust between the working population and the Government. People are saying that they accept the argument that the people must take responsibility for providing for our income in old age, but they have the right of a reciprocal entitlement to know that the Government are doing what is necessary to ensure that those who have discretion over their savings and are managing them do so in a way which is in their interests and to high standards of governance.
I am afraid that I do not buy “balance of interests” at all on this issue. If you come into the market to provide a pension product under auto-enrolment, you cannot sell or manage a product that does not meet the needs of the savers. You would not say, “Well, I will leave the brakes off a car in the interests of not making the employees redundant”. You have to sell a product that meets the interests of the members and is designed and managed with the interests of the saver at heart.
The independent governance bodies, or committees, are very weak as they are proposed. There are lots of people commentating to that effect. As proposed, they have fewer new powers—or no powers—for resources, for information, or for appointment of members to the board. It is in the gift of the companies themselves. As currently advised, they have no powers or capacity to address conflicts of interest. I know that this issue of governance is a work in progress. The Government are considering the matter and are due to report further. The OFT says that it has more work to do on its recommendations. The Law Commission is looking into this.
What cannot be dodged at all, in my view, is that any governance structure, requirements or arrangements for a private pension system that does not put the identification and resolution of conflicts of interests in the interests of the saver at its heart will be flawed. Successive Governments will keep picking up the consequences of that. There must be some—cross-party or whatever—biting on the principle that if you give the market a huge demand side that it could never have created itself under a voluntary system, that carries with it the requirement for a high standard of governance. The Government must say that those who enter the market under auto-enrolment to provide pension products must operate on the basis that any conflicts of interest are resolved in favour of the beneficiary or saver.
Lord Bates
I do not have any information to hand on that. However, we have got the point that I was perhaps overegging this by saying it was the only thing, and I need to recognise that other factors were perhaps considered when it came to putting this restriction in place. There was no sinister purpose, it was simply to say that there was a huge task to be undertaken and to ensure that NEST’s systems and operations could actually handle this. We do not want to put excessive burdens on NEST so that it fails when so many are dependent on its success.
Baroness Drake
Will the Minister also accept that volumes are critical to the success of NEST and to its charges, and that there is a fine balance between accommodating the concerns of other operators in the industry and not maintaining constraints so long that it undermines the efficiency of the NEST project as a whole?
Lord Bates
The noble Baroness makes a important point in relation to this and I would not dissent from it. NEST has a vital role to play and we want it to be a success. However, it is new, and a new system is coming online, so this ought to be done through learning from experience in a gradual and incremental way rather than as a big bang, of the sort which has had its problems in the past.
Pensions Bill
Debate between Baroness Drake and Lord Bates(10 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Drake
Will the Minister accept that, whereas getting every automatic enrolment qualifying scheme up to a minimum standard is an excellent aspiration, getting everyone up to a minimum standard is not the same as setting a very high set of standards for a scheme that you are using to default people’s pensions into?
Lord Bates
The Government are not averse to excellent aspirations in a whole range of policy areas but in that particular area we need to look at the issue of the quality. In many ways, this goes back to the introduction of auto-enrolment, when perhaps it should have been the case that scheme quality was dealt with at that time. That would have made an awful lot of sense.
Baroness Drake
I do not want to get into that political debate because there might be some merit in what the noble Lord said. One of the core issues is that a default pension scheme was not chosen but I do not want to drift there. However, it does not matter who should have dealt with the minimum standards for qualifying schemes and when. If the Government are going to take to themselves the power to say, on behalf of millions of people in this country, “We will automatically transfer”, then the governance standards required in the scheme receiving the pots transferred under those terms have to be pretty high, do they not?
Lord Bates
Yes, and our hope and belief is that there will be higher standards. That cannot be issued by diktat and has not been covered. We are simply giving the powers and setting out the framework as to how we will go about that, but that discussion has to be had with the pensions industry. The conversation is ongoing and we will certainly be reporting on that progress.
I turn to some of the specific points that have been raised. The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, talked about the level of support and seemed to be fairly sceptical about whether there was any.
Lord Bates
The noble Baroness always asks an honest and genuine question, and I am trying to give an honest and genuine response, which is to say that we are not necessarily comparing like with like here. Although people understand how the pot-follows-member scheme might work—in other words, they will have just one pot, and everything will be transferred into it—they do not necessarily understand what the noble Baroness is proposing in terms of alternatives, whether they are single, multiple or virtual aggregators. Therefore, to give a clear-cut position on that is somewhat difficult.
It was drawn to my attention today that Adrian Boulding of Legal and General, one of the largest pension providers, in today’s Pensions Expert, formerly Pensions Week, says:
“the concept of your pension pot following automatically to a new employer is now not far off. The long-term benefits of people having ‘one big fat pension pot’, as the minister likes to call it”—
I think the Minister he is referring to is my right honourable friend Steven Webb—
“will be greater consumer engagement, more informed decisions, greater buying power and better pension outcomes. All well worth striving for”.
Lord Bates
He might say that but he is one of the providers and I therefore think that that is certainly well worth listening to. Another reason why we have come to this conclusion is because there is a great deal of uncertainty about what is happening out there. Auto-enrolment in pension schemes has been a huge success and the previous Government deserve credit for introducing it in the 2007 and 2008 Acts, based on the recommendations of the Turner commission. The price of the success of auto-enrolment is that it is creating a larger number of smaller pension pots as people move on. Figures have been quoted of there already being 370,000, and the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, has talked about a future figure of 600,000. That means that the need to make a decision is more urgent than ever. The noble Baroness was asking, “What does the industry think? What are people actually thinking?”. Pensions Expert, in its comment and analysis section said:
“If last year was about policy, then this year it is going to be all about making things work. Government have now clearly set the direction of travel. The success of auto-enrolment—in terms of low opt-out rates—means even more small pots are going to be created than were expected. Previous estimates that auto-enrolment would create around 370,000 new pots of less than £2,000 each year now look woefully low”.
They are very clear in what they are saying: they want direction. That does not mean to say that that direction cannot be changed by a future Government—just that they are getting clear direction. We consulted about it in 2011; in 2012 we issued a response; in 2013 we actually said what we were going to do. It seems as if finally, the industry—and, we hope, members—are getting their heads around the fact that this is the preferred option and the route that we are going down to ensure that we actually make it work.
Lord Bates
The noble Lord makes my point: it is more difficult to understand. What are we trying to do? We are trying to make it simpler. We are trying to get people to be able to understand it. That is one of the reasons why it appeals to people. They will only ever have one pension pot; under the other scheme they may have several; they will be able to keep track of that and follow it through. Anyway, we can discuss and debate that, but in all of the consultation that was undertaken, it was clear that there was a strong view in favour—not only from the respondents of the consultation, but also in the opinion polls that followed from the industry.
The noble Lord, Lord Turner, raised the important issue that pot follows member fails to deal with high charges. We strongly agree that driving up scheme quality is of paramount importance. This is an issue wider than just a scheme used for transfers in the aggregator model, but actually should be something that applies to all, to set minimum standards across a broader range of schemes. Therefore, in doing so, it would benefit not just those affected by these pension pot transfers, but also the existing members of those schemes.
The noble Lord, Lord Turner, said he did not accept the pot size comparisons that were being put forward. He spoke about the £2,000 limit: why was it £2,000? We actually consulted not just on £10,000: we consulted on £20,000, £10,000, £5,000, all the way down to £2,000 and even £1,000, which is similar to the amount that is currently used in the Australian model, which is often cited in this context. In all of those different levels, pot follows member came out ahead of the aggregator in terms of individual responses.
Baroness Drake
I would not presume to speak for the noble Lord, Lord Turner—I learn from him, not the other way around—but the point he was making was that one of the Government’s arguments against aggregator was that they would have to limit the pot size, which would introduce inefficiencies, because if they did not do so, it would distort the market. He was saying, I think, that he did not necessarily accept that that was a compelling argument against aggregator.
Lord Bates
It is a shame that the noble Lord, Lord Turner, is not here to respond to that himself or to clarify the point, but I take the clarification from the noble Baroness about where he was going. On the issue of how to drive down costs, the noble Lord referred to the potential and mentioned some horrendous numbers—25% or 30% of accrued pension disappearing in charges and how low it was possible to get that. There are some very interesting findings, which we are consulting on at present, about how technology would be a key ally in this. The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, asked about this too, wondering whether we preferred a paper-based system or an electronic system. Our preference, based on the current evidence, is invariably towards electronic, because there are associated costs every time you push a bit of paper around. I was interested to read in various articles that you might be able to get the figure for the entire transaction of a transfer down to £105 for both transmitting and receiving the amount if you do it electronically. There needs to be an electronic element to this and that probably points in the direction of a database. We are still consulting on that. We are open to advice, but that is probably something on which the industry will have to offer views.