Pension Schemes Bill

Debate between Baroness Drake and Lord McAvoy

Wednesday 7th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord McAvoy]

My Lords, I shall also speak to Amendment 9. I do not have the reputation of having an unlimited supply of charm, so I shall use what I have left to try to work the oracle on these two amendments.

Clause 14 allows for regulations to be made requiring scheme trustees or managers to prepare an investment strategy. Specifically, the regulations may include requirements on the content of the statement and on the reviewing and revising of the statement. Clause 15 allows for regulations to be made requiring the trustees or managers of a pension scheme to prepare a report about the performance of collective benefit investments. The regulations may include how often these reports need to be obtained and who the reports should be obtained from.

The amendments to each of the clauses simply change the stipulation that the regulations “may” require this to a stipulation that the regulations “must” require this. In doing this, we inevitably return to the nature of the delegated powers in Part 2. The question is whether the Government can imagine leaving some of these powers unused when they come to issue regulations under this part of the Bill and, if so, which ones.

The investment strategy for collective benefits is obviously a crucial part of these schemes. We have already discussed the fact that collective defined contribution schemes have the potential to offer investment strategies that perform better than individual defined contribution schemes. It is also important because research on the subject by the Institute for Public Policy Research showed that the feeling that contributions might be invested badly on savers’ behalf, leaving savers with relatively smaller rewards than they were expecting, can serve to disincentivise savers. As with other aspects of governance, trust in investment strategies is essential.

Will the Minister say, first, whether the Government can imagine a circumstance under which they would not issue regulations requiring a statement of investment strategy to be prepared? Will he provide the Committee with any more detail on what the trustees or managers are likely to be required to do with the statement of investment strategy? Will it need to be made available to scheme members, for instance? The amendment to Clause 15 is in a similar vein. Can the Government imagine any reason why the regulations issued under this clause would not require an investment performance report to be produced by a trustee or scheme manager?

There is also considerable concern about the wider question of what kind of information is made available in investment reports. For instance, the Minister in the other place was usefully able to say that information was likely to be available on transaction costs, but, less usefully, was unable to give any details as to which transaction costs would be laid out in an investment report. Ideally, we would like trustees to have access to enough information to be able to judge whether the investment is being managed as efficiently as it should be. I hope the Minister is able to shed a bit more light on that aspect of the clause. I beg to move.

[Baroness Drake]

My Lords, I support Amendment 8, which would require trustees or managers of a collective benefits pension to prepare a statement of their investment strategy in connection with any of their investments. The issue here is not that they “may” be required but that they “must” be required—that is the straightforward proposition in the amendment.

The reason I came in when I read the amendment is that it seems to me pretty inconceivable that a collective benefits scheme would be allowed to operate without the preparation of such a statement, particularly given the way in which such a scheme is managing risk on a collective basis across and between different generations of savers, and where the individuals in the scheme do not have a well defined pot over which they have clear and individual ownership. I have to ask the Minister: when would one ever conceive of a situation where a statement of investment strategy was not required in a collective benefits scheme? An increased return on savings is not an automatic product of collective benefits schemes. Sound governance is the essential ingredient, which must include transparency and clarity on investment strategy.