Pension Schemes Bill

Debate between Baroness Drake and Lord Newby

Monday 12th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Drake]

My Lords, I had not intended to speak on this amendment but I should like to support my noble friend in his probing. As a pension trustee, I deal with these requests for transfers for a cash equivalent value from DB to DC schemes. I think I dealt with two this morning. As someone with a fiduciary duty—when I see the scale of what can be transferred—they keep me awake at night. What I had to sign off this morning made me think that I should take the opportunity to reinforce my noble friend’s concern.

I am sure that demand for these transfers is already rising in anticipation of the new freedoms that will flow from April 2015. I am concerned. We have already seen problems such as pensions liberation. We can talk about the FCA and the regulated industry, but what unregulated charlatans and scoundrels are waiting in the wings to encourage people to transfer their funds and access their freedoms? As someone who has been a trustee for about 27 years—dreadful I know—I have seen the personal pensions problem, the cash accounts transfer values and the pension liberation scams. I have watched these things from the perspective of a trustee. I have a real fear that this is a car crash waiting to happen unless it is properly regulated.

Two adjectives go with advice: “independent” and “appropriate”. Independence is easy to define, in a way, because it has a regulatory definition. What is really important is what is appropriate. As a trustee I would want to know what the Government think is the appropriateness of the advice people have received when they make applications to the schemes of which I am a trustee for such a transfer.

I read the response to my noble friend Lord Bradley on the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee’s report and my reading of that letter is that the Government are on the case. That would be great, and if they are I want to say positive things and encourage the Minister to deal with this robustly, because it is a car crash waiting to happen. It is not just a matter of the big defined benefit pots. If you are on quite a modest income and are lucky enough to have a DB scheme, then even if your pension is going to be about £4,000 a year that will translate into a really big pot of cash—a pot of cash such as you may not have seen before—leaving you quite vulnerable. I can see from the letter to my noble friend Lord Bradley that the Government are on the case. I urge them to stay on the case.

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, these amendments give expression to the recommendations of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee concerning Clause 48. Amendments 47 and 48 make the regulations under subsections (3) and (7) subject to the affirmative procedure. Amendment 44A narrows the power taken in Clause 48(7) in such a way that regulations could not be made setting out the nature of appropriate advice but would instead focus on the characteristics of an appropriate person. As the noble Baroness has just pointed out, my colleague Steve Webb, the Minister for Pensions, wrote to the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, chair of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, acknowledging the committee’s concerns, providing a commitment to address them as far as we can and explaining why we were unable to accept the committee’s exact recommendations. The letter details alternative ways in which we will be able to address the concerns of the committee and the House. As Amendments 47 and 48 implement the committee’s recommendations, the government response is along similar lines to the letter, which can be found in the Library.

Pension Schemes Bill

Debate between Baroness Drake and Lord Newby

Tuesday 16th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby]

I also pay tribute, very briefly, to my right honourable friend Steve Webb, who, as Minister for Pensions, has taken the lead in driving these and many other pension reforms forward. Many said that a coalition Government would not be able to make long-term reforms of a fundamental nature. Well, when it comes to pensions, whatever you think about them, you cannot claim that the Government have shied away from looking at all the issues. Indeed, they are effecting major changes.

At first sight, you would have thought that there could be no issue about the fact that giving people more freedom to spend their money is a good thing; that is what these Bills do, and therefore there will be unalloyed pleasure at the prospect of doing it. However, as noble Lords have pointed out, there are two challenges with this. First, many individuals either lack the financial literacy to make much sense of their finances, which we know about, or are slothful when it comes to thinking about pensions—which I think the current system encourages in some cases, not least because of the way in which they are treated by their pension providers.

As we know, many pension providers have been untrustworthy in the past, and have misled people rather than encouraged them. In the majority of cases, even now, they provide information to their individual policyholders in a manner that the policyholders cannot understand. Pension providers know jolly well that they cannot understand it and they have almost wilfully refused to make information available in a manner that people can understand. One of the great attractions of what we are doing on the guidance front is that it will require a template to be completed by pension providers about what on earth it is that individual policies amount to.

We have a market that is not working as markets are supposed to work. The purchasers do not have the information that they need and the suppliers very often are not providing products in a way that is fair to the consumer. That is why the whole issue of guidance is at the heart of these Bills and the debate today. I start with that because every noble Lord who has spoken has talked about guidance. As we have explained, from April next year everyone who benefits from the new flexibilities will get free and impartial guidance. The Treasury will take overarching responsibility for the service that will be delivered, but it will actually be delivered by the Pensions Advisory Service and Citizens Advice. I assure noble Lords that they will be adequately resourced and will be able to, and by their very nature will, give impartial advice.

To ensure that the service is in place in what is admittedly a tight timetable, an implementation team has been established within the Treasury to work with those providers. The Government have given the FCA responsibility for setting standards for guidance and monitoring compliance. This will, we believe, deal with the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord German, about whether the service will be of a high enough quality—we are confident that it will be. Further progress on how we intend to introduce and implement the guidance guarantee will be issued by the Government before Christmas.

Noble Lords asked whether there should be a second line of defence, so I should perhaps just explain what is already planned and what the FCA has already said. The FCA has made it clear that firms should not do anything to dissuade customers from getting guidance, but it accepts, and the Government accept, that not all individuals will seek to take up the offer of guidance. It is their choice to do so. In its new rules document, the FCA confirmed that pension providers must signpost individuals to the guidance service in wake-up packs. We have said that they should be issued four to six months ahead of an individual’s nominated retirement date. But I take the point made by a number of noble Lords that it might be advisable to think about giving earlier signposts to policyholders that they need to think about their pensions.

The FCA has reaffirmed the expectation that firms encourage consumers to shop around on the open market and that they should receive sufficient information about the consequences of their choices before signing up to a purchase. It is introducing a new requirement that, when communicating with customers about accessing their funds, firms are required to ask whether they have taken guidance or relevant financial advice. If not, they should encourage them to do so. As noted above, it has introduced a new requirement to recommend that consumers seek guidance or advice rather than simply signposting it.

Firms will be required to give a description of the tax implications of the option selected by the consumer and it has been made clear that firms can question the consumer’s decision when they feel that it is inconsistent with their circumstances without fear of overstepping the boundary into regulated advice. The FCA is considering whether it is appropriate to place further requirements on providers and, as noble Lords have mentioned, it is reviewing the rules in the first half of next year. The whole issue of what might constitute a second line of defence will be in its mind at that point.

Finally on the guidance, the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, asked whether it would be one shot at getting the advice. I will say two things on that. First, the fact that the pension provider will have to provide details on the individual’s pension in a standard form will help to ensure that, when the person goes, they have the information that they need. One of my concerns is that people turn up without the key bit of information —I can imagine myself doing that. We hope that we are getting round that. At the very least, people who have had their advice will be able to go back to the website and access it to check further information that they then think they need.

I turn to individual noble Lords’ comments. The noble Lords, Lord Beecham and Lord Davies of Oldham, and others asked about the impact on the Exchequer. A number of noble Lords slightly implied that we were doing all this only to get a small amount of additional income. I can assure noble Lords that the public finances are not in such a bad way that we have completely to reorder the way we do pensions to get a short-term benefit. The Budget costings showed that the net additional income to the Exchequer from the scheme will be £320 million next year, rising to £1.22 billion in 2018, but then falling off after that because people will bring things forward. As I say, our motivation for doing that has nothing to do with something that is, though significant, a relatively modest figure in the overall context of the public finances.

The noble Lord, Lord Davies, set out the Opposition’s tests, which included guidance, which I have dealt with, fairness and cost. On fairness, we are ensuring that the generous tax reliefs available on pension savings are not used solely for tax planning, given the flexibility that the rules offer. Overall, we think that the rules promote fairness. On cost, and in particular the question of the impact of the changes on welfare and social care spending, that obviously will depend on how people choose to use their savings. However, the Government do not expect this impact to be significant in the context of the steps taken to improve the sustainability of pensions spending, such as the changes to the state pension age and reforms to public service pensions. I remind noble Lords that the estimated net impact of the Government’s key pension policies is a saving of about £17 billion in 2030 on today’s terms.

The noble Lord, Lord Davies, asked about the review. It has two elements. On reviewing the cost to the Exchequer, the Government are committed to keeping the policy under review through the monitoring of information collected on tax returns and tax records. Additionally, HMRC regularly publishes data on tax receipts, which will reflect any impacts on the Exchequer. Any such impacts will be reflected in forecasts made at future fiscal events. On the guidance, it obviously will be extremely important that we understand its outcomes. The Treasury will establish robust KPIs to measure consumer outcomes.

My noble friend Lord German asked about the publication of the FCA standards and when that would be. The FCA has stated that they will be produced before the new scheme comes in, which is hardly surprising. We hope that it will do that significantly earlier than that, we hope at Royal Assent. On his concern about regulators working together, I say that the DWP and HMRC work closely with the Pensions Regulator and the FCA to ensure that there are no gaps in regulation in this area. We have no reason to believe that there are any. He also asked about housing wealth. The guidance will make sure that consumers consider questions about their situation as a whole and will direct them to further sources of information as appropriate. However, one of the problems of housing wealth for many people is that they do not have any intention of accessing it as part of their pensions. Some people do, but very many do not. Given the practical problems of downsizing, which we discussed recently in your Lordships’ House, many people who in an ideal world might want to do that in fact do not.

The noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, asked about a possible extension of the levy beyond the number of firms currently planned. Until now, the Government have decided that those firms which are most likely to benefit from better informed and engaged consumers should help to fund the service, hence the levy on the current range of firms. Occupational pension schemes do not currently offer accumulation products, as membership of such schemes is linked to employment and they do not sell products into the market in the same way as financial services firms. It is possible, however, that schemes may wish to change this approach over time, and we will keep the levy under review.

The noble Baroness also asked about welfare and the impact of these changes on social care, as well as how the Government are treating the new pension arrangements. We are treating the options as similarly as possible for the current welfare means test purposes by applying a notional income of 100% rather than 150% of the income that an annuity would have provided. We want to make sure that the decisions people make about drawing down their pensions will not significantly affect how they are assessed for welfare and social care support.

A number of noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Hutton, questioned the evidence that the pension flexibility as proposed will encourage or discourage saving. Of course, we will not know that definitively until we have the scheme up and running. However, the National Association of Pension Funds found in its spring workforce survey that 28% of workers say that they are now more likely to save into a pension. Young people are the most likely to say that, and lower-income respondents also said that they were more attracted to pension saving. While a number of noble Lords have been rather gloomy about how people will respond to these changes in terms of savings, one of the reasons people do not want to save for a pension at the moment is that they often think that an annuity is such appallingly bad value. That is definitely the case for young people, and indeed more generally.

[Baroness Drake]

Will the noble Lord accept that in terms of people not actively saving, the behavioural evidence shows that it has nothing to do with annuities, but with their own inertia about dealing with complex decisions? Any complex financial decision has the same effect.

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, I think that the strong take-up of auto-enrolment suggests that people are actually a bit more long-sighted than they are sometimes given credit for. Young people in their 20s and early 30s who are thinking about their pension savings are looking at what kind of value for money they can get from doing that as opposed to putting their money into alternative forms of saving. So I am not sure that I altogether agree with the noble Baroness.

The noble Lord, Lord Hutton, said that the Government should strongly encourage partial annuitisation. We have always been clear that an annuity will remain the right choice for many at some point in their retirement because it can provide the security that they are looking for. He also asked about inheritance tax. I can say that the intention of the legislation is that the scheme administrator will retain some discretion over how death benefits are paid, ensuring that these benefits can remain outside the scope of inheritance tax.

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, I do not know, I am afraid, but I will write to the noble Lord as I am almost out of time. The House has rules that, as a Whip—although I know I am going to break them already—I can break only to a certain extent. I will write to the noble Lord in that respect. I might also write to him about the situation in Australia.

The noble Lord, Lord Freeman, asked whether the new flexibilities would put people at risk of poverty in the future. The basic principle here is that people must be trusted to make their own choices about how to use their savings to fund their retirement. We believe that the introduction of the new, simpler state pension in April 2016 will help minimise the impact on means-tested benefits as the full level of the new state pension will be above the level of the basic means test in personal credit, and we expect over 80% of those reaching state pension age in the mid-2030s to be receiving the full new state pension.

The noble Baroness, Lady Drake, took up the theme of the noble Lord, Lord Hutton, about the dangers of a revolution. She saw the dangers as being significantly more considerable, I think, than most noble Lords who spoke. Of course, some of the potential problems that she foresees are impossible to predict absolutely, but I did not recognise the gloomy landscape that she portrayed in a number of respects. She asked why we were still paying tax relief when people will spend all their money. Tax relief is designed to support and encourage people to save for their retirement.

[Baroness Drake]

I did not ask why we are still paying tax relief if people are going to spend all their money. I asked whether, if people did not have to have annuities, it was possible that, over time, successive Chancellors revisiting the consequences for the next generation might not have this generation’s generosity on tax relief.

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, I was just about to say that this Government certainly are not going to revisit it. It is impossible to know what future Governments will do about tax policy. One of the key points about tax relief is to encourage people to save and I think any future Government will want them to carry on doing that.

A number of noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, talked about the possibility of people taking their pensions early at 55. There is that freedom but my personal view is that, particularly as people are working to a later age rather than retiring earlier, the number of people who will wish or think it sensible to take their pension at 55 will not be very great. For some people, particularly those with health conditions, taking an early pension is absolutely the logical thing to do.

The noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, asked whether trustees and scheme managers will be required to evaluate the appropriateness of the advice that individuals are given when moving from DB to DC. As we have set out in our consultation, we intend that trustees and managers will be required to check that advice has been received from an FCA-authorised person but they will not be required to evaluate the content of the advice or to check its quality. The detail of the process by which scheme managers will be required to check that the advice has been taken will be set out in regulations, which we will work closely with the industry to develop. I apologise for rushing through.

The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, asked whether I would be happy to arrange a meeting with BALPA, and I would indeed.

The noble Lord, Lord Bradley, gave a strong explanation of the benefit of collective schemes. He touched on one of the key benefits of the changes. We do not know at this stage how many people will take them up; we cannot give detailed estimates of how many people will do any number of things at this point. We see strong practical reasons to believe that collective schemes will benefit many people and that the industry will move to develop them.

To sum up, as my noble friend Lord Bourne laid out at the beginning of our debate, these are radical changes that build on this Government’s previous reforms to the UK private pensions market. At the heart of the reforms is the Government’s intent to give people greater choice. That entails both greater choice for businesses regarding the type of pensions that they offer and greater choice for individuals in how they access their pension savings. These radical changes need to be made to reinvigorate the private pensions market and to ensure that it remains relevant for future generations of savers. I commend the Bills to the House.

Pensions Advice

Debate between Baroness Drake and Lord Newby

Wednesday 23rd July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, being married to a vicar, I could not possibly say that vicars are not always good sources of advice. The key challenge raised by the Question is that for many people pensions are a subject of complete bemusement. This reform, which I believe is very welcome, will give people much more choice over how they spend their money in retirement. However, they will be able to spend it wisely only if they are given proper guidance, and that is what the Government are committed to ensuring.

[Baroness Drake (Lab)]

My Lords, guidance to help people make choices about how to spend their pension funds is of course to be welcomed, but given that the Government expect the industry to respond to greater choice by providing new retirement income products, how will they ensure that these new products meet the interests of savers in terms of quality standards, transparency and level of charges, so avoiding new manifestations of consumer detriment occurring yet again in the pensions and investment industry?

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, this is why we have set up a new framework for regulation and why we established the Financial Conduct Authority. We have given the authority much greater powers than the FSA had to deal explicitly with these problems. We have to be sure that the new products which are coming forward meet the standards that the noble Baroness wishes to see. The FCA is tasked with that job and is absolutely determined to avoid the problems of mis-selling that we have seen in the past.