Pensions Bill [HL]

Baroness Greengross Excerpts

Tuesday 15th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Greengross]

My Lords, I declare an interest in that I head up ILC-UK, one of 12 organisations across the world that look at planning for the future in the light of demographic change. I agree with the Minister that, while we all celebrate the incredible changes in life expectancy and we all hope to benefit from them, they present us with enormous challenges that we all must try to meet in a fair, just and realistic way. I am therefore pleased to take part in this Second Reading debate.

I am sure that all of us in this House would support the aim of getting more people to save for their old age. I particularly welcome the fact that NEST is designed particularly to meet the needs of people who are largely new to pension saving. I am certain that NEST will be a valuable addition to the pensions landscape and I welcome the incorporation into the Bill of the recommendations of the 2012 review team to widen pension provision and to help to keep existing schemes open.

One good aspect of the earnings trigger of £7,475, which the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, was worried about, is that it should help to prevent employees and employers from making very small contributions. However, while welcoming the Bill, we must be alert to the possibility of unintended consequences. Unless we deal with them, there could be a lot of losers as well as winners, as other noble Lords have pointed out.

I will make brief comments about the three key areas of the Bill: auto-enrolment and its particular relevance for older workers; raising the state pension age and, in particular, the impact on older women, as has been mentioned; and the move from RPI to CPI and its impact on older people.

The Bill introduces an optional waiting period for auto-enrolment so that an employer can give an employee notice that their auto-enrolment will be delayed by up to three months. However, to ensure that those workers who have their auto-enrolment deferred are aware of their rights and to encourage consumers to take personal responsibility for their pension saving, it is important that the notice should state clearly that the worker retains the right to opt in to the pension scheme at any time.

The full implementation of auto-enrolment throws into sharp focus some of the remaining unresolved issues surrounding the NEST proposition. Any amount saved in a personal pension has to be better than nothing and even a small pot may make a difference at the marginal level, where most people are. A minor issue that immediately springs to mind is the fact that transfers to NEST are currently heavily restricted. Allowing an employee to transfer pension pots—especially small ones—into NEST would encourage better pension savings and take away the burden of administering small pension pots from the employer and the pension scheme. I hope that the Minister will consider this point.

Personal accounts may not be suitable for all employees, particularly for low-earning individuals of 50 and over, as the charging structure of NEST and the phasing in and staging of auto-enrolment and the employer contribution could significantly reduce the size and value of savings pots for those close to pension age, particularly single people. At the same time, depending on overall household income, they could lose their entitlement to means-tested benefits. It is worth considering whether these people would get better value from devoting their funds to other forms of saving, such as ISAs, during their working life. Perhaps the noble Lord will consider that.

In order to manage expectations and to reduce the risk of disappointment at retirement, would it not make sense to impose the simple requirement on the employer that at enrolment the jobholder would be provided with an annual pension benefits forecast based on their statutory retirement age, which would include the impact that such benefits could have on any entitlement to state means-tested benefits? Such a forecast would complement any state pension forecast obtained from the Pension Service. The jobholder would then have the option to seek further advice and, if appropriate, to opt out of a personal account and consider alternative savings arrangements.

The raising of the state pension age was due to take effect between 2024 and 2026 but, because it is being brought forward, the timetable in the Pensions Act 1995 will be accelerated so that the state pension age for women will reach 65 by November 2018. The effect is that, although no men will have to work longer than an extra 12 months, half a million women will have to work at least a year longer, as the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, said. Three hundred thousand of those are going to have to work an extra 18 months, while 33,000, born between 6 March and 5 April 1954, will have to work two extra years.

I understand that deficit reduction is a priority for the Government, but the legislation is discriminatory against women born in 1954. I do not expect that I am alone in having received several letters illustrating this point from people who are, or feel, caught out by this change. It will hit them very harshly but make no impact on the deficit reduction in this Parliament. My concern is that those who will suffer are the most vulnerable women. Many are single; they have not had a chance to accumulate a private pension and will be reliant solely on the state pension. Many will also be unaware of the changes and will not be prepared. We need to give people time to order their affairs. For those who are going to have to work an extra two years, this is very unfair. The changes seem to be contrary to the coalition agreement, which said that any rise to 66 would not start sooner than 2020 for women. Therefore, could Her Majesty’s Government consider leaving the increase in the state pension age to 66 until 2020, when under the current timetable women’s state pension age will reach 65? I do not know whether the Minister can give me any reassurance on that.

Although the removal of a default retirement age will be welcomed by those who would prefer to continue working beyond 65, the recent Marmot report on health inequalities in England—mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord German—highlighted the fact that around 75 per cent of the population will not be healthy enough to work until the age of 68. Such figures are a clear argument in favour of more investment in preventive healthcare. If the Government are to succeed in extending the working age without creating inequitable outcomes, they need to place more emphasis on job quality, support for people with care responsibilities and the creation of transferable skills among the older workforce. In addition, not only is ill health a major factor in early retirement but it is more likely to affect lower-skilled workers, who tend to have less generous pension arrangements. We wonder what will happen to those who are forced to retire before the state pension age because of ill health but who do not have access to private or personal pension income to tide them over until they receive their state pension at this later age. Perhaps the Minister can elaborate a little on that.

Lastly, I wish to make a brief observation on the decision to use CPI rather than RPI as the measure for inflation indexation. As we know, the major difference between them is that CPI does not include housing costs—the effect of mortgage rates or council tax being part of that. Last week, the DWP published an impact assessment of the costs of the Government’s decision for members of defined benefit pension schemes. The effect of the move from RPI to CPI for protecting the value of future pensions is to reduce the value of benefits over the next 15 years by £83 billion. As the DWP puts it:

“The main cost of this policy is to members of private sector DB pension schemes who will see the anticipated value of their pension rights reduced and the value of their total remuneration package reduced in the short term”.

The value of this reduction in pension rights and total remuneration equates to a significant £5.7 billion per annum. For 2 million relevant active members of pension schemes, the reduction in their annual rate of pension accrual is broadly the same as a pay cut of between £2,250 and £2,500 a year on average. That is the implied fall in their total remuneration, including the value of the pension promise made to them by their employer. However, they will not feel it until they retire, when their pensions will be up to 12 per cent lower than would otherwise have been the case in real terms in 2027 and 20 per cent lower in 2050. This is a reduction in the value of pensions to pension scheme members and is a transfer from them to shareholders.

The changes in inflation indexing that will occur as we move from RPI to CPI will impact older pensioners in particular. According to Age UK’s silver retail prices index, the impact of inflation on those in later life is far greater than estimated by official measures. For example, since the beginning of 2008, those aged over 55 have experienced price rises at almost two percentage points above that suggested by headline RPI figures, rising to four percentage points for those over 75. The gap between real and headline inflation over that period has cost the average 60 year-old £620 a year, rising to over £700 for someone aged between 65 and 69. This is mainly down to the different impact that fuel and energy price increases, reductions in savings rates, increases in mortgage interest payments and so on have on older people’s, versus younger people’s, spending power.

The Government have said that CPI is a more appropriate measure of pensioners’ costs than the RPI but they have not given any detailed explanation of that. I do not agree that it is a better measure. Since 1997, the CPI has, on average, been around 0.8 per cent lower that the RPI. One important reason for this is that it excludes housing costs, as has been said. I believe that the Government should retain the RPI as the main measure to be used where pensions and state benefits are linked to price increases. I hope that the noble Lord can assure me on some of those points.