Pension Schemes Bill

Lord Bradley Excerpts

Monday 12th January 2015 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Bradley]

30: After Clause 47, insert the following new Clause—
“Guidance guarantee: annual review
The Secretary of State must each year produce a report on the effectiveness of the guidance under Schedule 3, and that guidance must include—(a) the number of people who have taken up the guidance;(b) the number of people eligible to take up the guidance who did not do so;(c) the effectiveness of the guidance in preventing instances of consumer detriment through the purchasing of inappropriate products.”

[Lord Bradley (Lab)]

My Lords, I beg to move Amendment 30. At the start of our deliberations, it is worth reminding the Committee that at Second Reading we took two pension Bills together: the Pension Schemes Bill and the then Taxation of Pensions Bill. We did so because it was recognised that the two Bills were interrelated and that the issues to be scrutinised and debated were inextricably linked between them. While there was no debate in this House on the Taxation of Pensions Bill, as it was a money Bill, it would be impossible not to refer to these interrelationships in our deliberations today on such matters as pension guarantee, guidance guarantee, product development and the financial and economic consequences of the Bills.

Furthermore, we will continue the theme that we developed on day 1 in Committee: since so much of the Pension Schemes Bill relies on regulation—to date such regulations have not seen the light of day—we will continue to press the Government for far more information on the regulations, to try to make as much sense as possible of how the proposals in the Bill, and the Bills, will be implemented.

Similarly, we have highlighted the speed at which this legislation is being brought to the statute book, which further hinders scrutiny not only inside Parliament but by key stakeholders. These include those who will be responsible for delivering the crucial guidance guarantee—particularly Citizens Advice and the Pensions Advisory Service—and the pensions industry and its representative bodies, who will need to respond to the effects of the policy changes, some of which come into force in barely three months’ time.

As we have made clear throughout our deliberations, the overriding objective is broadly to support the freedoms and flexibilities in the Bill and to ensure that the public have all the information they need and the guidance they seek to ensure their interests are protected, and that they receive the best outcomes for their retirement without the fear of the scandal, for example, of mis-selling, which the public encountered some years ago.

One example of what I am alluding to emerged only today with the revelation from the Government that only 45% of new pensioners will be entitled to the full new flat-rate state pension in the first five years of the system. That is 2 million people who will not get the full amount. Certainty of the amount of the new pension will be critical in the decisions people may make about how they plan their retirement income or draw down cash immediately after April. I know that the Minister will want to clarify the situation when he responds.

It is in that spirit that I move Amendment 30. At the heart of the amendment is our wish to ensure that the Bill works in the way that it is intended, and that the guidance will be both taken up and prove effective in helping people to choose the right products to fund their retirement or to make the right decisions about lump sums or other retirement income. We believe that guidance is needed but we are concerned that this House has, to date, been provided with too little information about what guidance will be offered. Additionally, will the quality of this guidance ensure that people make the right decisions for themselves and their families, now and in their later years?

I welcome the fact that more information about the guidance has been produced today and I thank the Minister for providing the Committee with it. In particular, we now have the title of the service, ‘Pension Wise’, and the branding, “Your Money. Your Choice”. However, I stress that at this point we are talking about guidance and not advice. We have made this point on a number of occasions during our deliberations and it is important to keep in mind the distinction between guidance and advice on which people rely.

I know it is intended that the guidance should be comprehensive—that has been elaborated on today in the announcement from the Treasury—which, to some extent, is reassuring. The assumption is part-based on the discussions in the Public Bill Committee in the House of Commons, especially the interchange between the Minister for Pensions, Steve Webb, and the shadow Minister, Gregg McClymont. The Minister said in the other place:

“Guidance will discuss the pros and cons of different financial products and services”.—[Official Report, Commons, Pension Schemes Bill Committee, 4/11/14; col. 283.]

He quoted the Financial Conduct Authority, saying that,

“guidance will need to be tailored, providing consumers with sufficient personalised information, so that they can understand their options and make confident, informed decisions about their retirement options”.

The FCA also thinks guidance should include information on tax matters. This is clearly an important consideration. The Minister responsible in the other place went on to say that a guidance session has to be person-specific and that he was consulting for opinions, attitudes and expectations on what is needed in good guidance.

I realise that the Treasury is taking this matter forward and leads on this. Again, I further welcome the information that has been provided in the guidance guarantee today. We have to ensure that we can digest the contents of that information that I received at lunchtime today, so that we can further consider the matters within it. That may lead to further consideration of the detail on Report.

It is reassuring to know that the Minister envisages guidance sessions to be comprehensive, but it raises the question of how much it will cost and how those costs will be met. The National Association of Pension Funds estimates the cost of advice for people seeking an annuity under the current system to be £681 million—I mean £681 per session. It does not go quite as far as millions; we might get to that at some later stage. That is hardly a simple assessment but it is not such a comprehensive session, in many ways, as the far-reaching guidance envisaged by Steve Webb, the Minister, and the Financial Conduct Authority.

At £681 per session, it will cost £480 million to provide those 600,000 people retiring in 2015-16 with guidance. But how many people will, in practice, seek guidance? It is safe to assume that some will not choose to take it up, perhaps because their pension pot is too small—maybe less than £10,000, although it could be argued that this group is the very one that will need the best advice. Others will pay an independent financial adviser. The Legal & General group helpfully undertook a trial of free advice to some 9,000 people. It reports that only 2.5% took up the offer. This would cost £154,000 at £681 per session. The Chartered Insurance Institute estimates a 90% take-up. This would cost £368 million. Which do the Government think most likely to be correct? Have the Government risk-assessed this? If so, can this information be available to the Committee? I note that the Treasury has today estimated a cost of the service at £35 million for 2015-16. I would therefore be grateful if the Minister would tell the Committee how this amount has been calculated.

The Minister also told the Public Bill Committee, on 4 November in the other place, that guidance providers will not be subject to FCA regulation. Instead, the FCA must put in place standards that designated providers must work within. Designated providers must be chosen and approved by the Treasury and the list will be available to the public. The FCA will have a duty to monitor compliance and the Treasury will take responsibility for ensuring that the FCA framework is sound enough. Is that sufficient? Monitoring may be comprehensive but fall short of regulation. Perhaps the Minister can assure us on how this compliance will work. As the Minister may imagine, at the heart of my concern is a strong desire to avoid another mis-selling scandal, which would put the guarantee for savers at risk, with savers therefore failing to get the retirement income they need and deserve.

The current designated partners, the Pensions Advisory Service and Citizens Advice, are very credible providers of advice and guidance generally. I am sure that Citizens Advice will ensure that all 380 independent bureaux, which will deliver that advice, have all the necessary public liability insurance in place to protect them from claims arising from the guidance tipping into advice and then being acted on. But is it right not to regulate this market? Will others seek to enter the market with far less credible track records than these two esteemed bodies? For example, will people selling products be able to offer guidance via the designated lists in the future? Furthermore, could the Minister explain what redress people will have in practice? With 600,000 people entitled to free advice, it is inconceivable that something will not go wrong. The fact that it is guidance, not advice, could prove to be an inadequate veil to hide behind. The Minister in the other place seemed to think that few people would seek redress. However, I remain concerned, and the implications could be huge.

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[Lord Newby]

My Lords, we are keen to make sure that by the time people have been through the guidance process, they are able to make the best decisions for themselves. As I say, we hope that that will be possible in the vast bulk of cases first time around.

I think that what will happen in giving guidance in this area, as happens elsewhere, is that there will be a number of very special cases, but the vast bulk of people will have the same issues as others. The CAB, which after all has to give advice on the whole benefits system, which if anything is even more complicated than the pensions system, has a proven track record of developing the skills of people, and is very good at this—while this is, of course, what the Pensions Advisory Service does.

So we are confident that there are going to be well qualified people. We are building flexibility into the system—partly by having three ways of accessing it and partly, as I say, by, in exceptional circumstances or in a minority of circumstances, allowing people to go back—and we hope we are going to make sure that at the end of the day people will all have the degree of guidance that they need, relevant to their needs, to enable them to make well informed decisions.

[Lord Bradley]

I thank the Minister for his comprehensive reply, particularly when he said that the Treasury would be keeping its mitts all over the service. I assume that that was meant to be reassuring.

I note that he said that he thought the BBC had got the story wrong today about flat-rate pensions, and I listened with great care to his explanation, which we will need to reflect on very carefully. It is vital that people are clear about what their pension income will be when they are making plans about their whole-pot retirement income. I hope that when I read his response, it will be clear that that information will be available to people well in advance of them taking advice from the CAB, the Pensions Advisory Service or whatever source they may choose, so that they can rely on the figures provided to them by the Pension Service.

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Moved by

[Lord Bradley]

30A: After Clause 47, insert the following new Clause—
“Pensions flexibility: impact on government revenues
(1) The Chancellor of the Exchequer shall, within a period of 2 years from 6 April 2015, publish and lay before both Houses of Parliament a review of the impact of pension flexibility on government revenue, with particular reference to opportunities for tax and national insurance contributions avoidance.
(2) The information published under subsection (1) should include an assessment of the impact on—
(a) the use of salary sacrifice arrangements;(b) income tax receipts; and(c) national insurance contributions.”

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[Lord Bradley]

My Lords, the two amendments in this group are intended to ensure that the effects of the pension flexibilities on the public finances and savers are adequately monitored by the Government. Their purpose is to ensure the publication and proper analysis of the information and that it is placed in the public domain to ensure transparency.

I shall speak first to Amendment 30B, which requires the Treasury to produce a review of the effects of the pension flexibilities 18 months after they are introduced. This reflects the question we need to consider around the guidance guarantee and wider issues of pensions flexibility. We support the introduction of pension freedoms and flexibilities, but we want to ensure that they are done in the right way and that consumers are adequately protected. However, the pace at which the reforms are being brought forward leaves open considerable concern about the effects of the rollout. On Report in the other place, the Minister said:

“The Bill was originally much shorter and obtaining the approval of, originally, the Government to bring it forward took place before the Budget … as we are in the final Session of a Parliament, everything has been on an accelerated timetable”.—[Official Report, Commons, 25/11/14; col. 804.]

The pace at which the wider pension flexibilities provided for in this Bill and in the Taxation of Pensions Act are being brought forward have also led to concerns among a number of other interested parties about whether the Government have fully bottomed out the policy and whether the rollout will go exactly as they are planning. A recent report in the Financial Times said that a lack of detail about the reforms has left the industry concerned that they were at risk of failure. The chairman of the National Association of Pension Funds said:

“There are 4.2 million savers over the age of 55 who from next April will have the right to ‘choose’ how they take their retirement savings”.

He also said that,

“this lack of detail—this lack of clarity—is severely limiting our opportunity to get things right for our members … and it’s increasing the risk of failure”.

I point this out by way of background to show that, come April, there will still be a lot of work to do in reviewing the effects of the changes. The details of this amendment enable the Government to do just that. Conveniently, they will be along the lines of the test that we have already set out for these reforms: they should be fair; there should be decent products for low and middle-income savers; and the reforms should not result in extra pressures on the public finances.

The ongoing position of annuities is one such matter that needs to be considered. For some people, annuities will remain an attractive product because of the security they provide. The Treasury have recognised that this is the case. Therefore, if the market for annuities were to suffer some major change, and perhaps products that were good value in the first place were no longer then available, that would be something for this House to consider carefully. This is why the amendment requires a review to consider that matter.

Noble Lords will also be able to see that a review would be required to conduct an analysis of the cumulative effect on the revenues of the Treasury. Our other amendment on this point is focussed on the potential effects of salary sacrifice arrangements. It is also important to consider the possible costs in what the state may end up having to provide. I am not aware of any Treasury analysis of this. The Minister may well want to correct me on this and I am happy for him to do so.

Further, we still do not know how this will interact with changes to social care. In its written evidence to the Committee on the Taxation of Pensions Bill, the Association of British Insurers expressed concern that,

“a continued focus on early access at the age of 55 means that there may be barely enough in the pension pots of some savers to cover their near-term retirement income needs, let alone enough left to stretch to care costs in older age”.

We have also seen a recent report in which it is anticipated that pension withdrawals of this nature are set to rise by £6 billion above what the Government currently estimate. The charity Age UK warned last week that significant numbers of people could run out of cash in later life by withdrawing funds under the new plans unless tougher safeguards are in place.

We do not believe that the Government have conducted sufficient analysis of the potential impact on the social care landscape. We also believe that there has been a disproportionate focus on the new freedom to access pensions early, and to take money out, which was not previously possible, as I have just alluded to. That is why we are calling on the Government to publish a review setting out the distributional impact by income decile of the reforms in the Bill. It is also unclear what effect having access to flexi-access pensions will have on means-testing for social care. I am not sure that the Government have the answer to this yet, but I would be grateful if the Minister could tell us what effect an amount of money that exceeds the means test level in a flexi-access draw-down account would have on the individual’s liability. As I have already pointed out, that money may be expected to last until death, as an annuity would have, but it may be accessible in a way that capital sitting in a bank is. Will that meet the means-test criteria or not?

Just a few months from the changes coming into effect, there are clearly still a number of unanswered questions. That is why our amendment also covers a proper behavioural analysis of consumers in the light of the new freedoms and flexibility. At this point, may I also ask the Minister a question about access to funds? Is the report in the Sunday Times correct that the Minister in the other place is considering whether someone who has already taken an annuity may be able to buy themselves out of that so that they can be included in the new flexibilities and freedoms?

The other amendment in this group requires the Secretary of State to produce a report on the revenue impact of the changes contained in the Bill and the Taxation of Pensions Act. Taken together, there is the potential for the Government to lose a great deal of revenue. As a result, we want to probe the impact that this is likely to have on the figures that the Government have presented in the Budget and in subsequent reanalysis. The main issue at the core of this is so-called salary sacrifice, a potential tax effect first highlighted by John Greenwood in the Telegraph, whereby someone over 55 pays a large part of their salary into their pension pot to avoid paying national insurance and income tax. The Budget freedoms would then make it possible for them to flexibly access their money through their pension fund, saving them and their employer a potentially large amount of national insurance. Some 25% of what they access will be tax-free and the rest will be charged at their marginal rate of income tax. This does not appear to have been the Government’s intention, and steps have been taken to try to prevent this. An annual contribution allowance of £10,000 a year for anyone who is accessing pension benefit restricts the possible tax leakage but does not prevent it. The reduced £10,000 limit is activated only after the pension has been flexibly accessed for the first time. As explained by the Association of Accounting Technicians:

“In the first year, before the £40,000 allowance is lost, individuals over the age of 55 will still have the scope to save … NI on the full £40,000, provided they have the necessary earnings, less their existing pension contributions. Where an individual flushes (passes) an extra £30,000 through pension rather than drawing salary they will achieve a saving of £3,600 in employee NI, more than £1,500 in income tax and, also, £4,140 in employer NI (13.8%) in the first year. A total loss to the public purse of £9,240. The ‘Freedom and choice in pensions’ rules mean this money can be withdrawn immediately if an individual is over 55. This fact means that there will not be clear distinction between salary and pension for this age group”.

Questions remain for the Minister to answer over, first, whether that possibility was adequately taken into account before the change was announced and, secondly, whether the revisions made since then are sufficient. For instance, the Government’s revised figures that take into account the changes made since the Budget forecast a loss of £35 million in the first year, and then £25 million for years after that. However, if we are to assume that the annual allowance reduces the potential for tax leakage, why do the revisions forecast a loss? The only conclusion I can draw is that the initial figures did not take into account the potential for salary sacrifice. Can the Minister confirm that this is the case?

It may be the Government’s intention to introduce a more stringent allowance, in which case the £10,000 annual allowance was in fact a relaxation of the rules. However, that would appear to conflict with the Government’s statement that salary sacrifice was not intended to be part of the reforms. If the intent was an annual allowance of zero once the pension has been accessed, what analysis did the Government conduct that persuaded them to change it to £10,000, and can they provide it to Members of this House before Report? It is therefore an issue that needs to be kept under active review, and the Government should report to Parliament on the effect of this matter.

As I have said, the purpose of our two amendments is to create clarity and transparency. As my honourable friend Cathy Jamieson said in the other House:

“It is fair and sensible for us to ask that the new clause is included in the Bill because it would ensure that the Government did not simply monitor quietly in the background, waiting for something to go wrong, but proactively looked at all these areas and then brought further information to Parliament so that we could consider how best to do things in the future and remedy any unintended consequences or loopholes”.—[Official Report, Commons, Taxation of Pensions Bill Committee, 20/11/14; col. 123.]

That is the purpose behind our review, and I hope that the Government will accept the amendment. I beg to move.

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[Lord Newby]

My Lords, the two amendments in this group would require the Government to publish two reviews of the impact of pensions flexibility. I start by completely agreeing with the noble Lord, Lord Hutton, that these changes are welcome freedoms and flexibilities but, like all freedoms, they bring some risks that I hope, in a variety of ways, we shall be effective at mitigating.

Noble Lords will not be desperately surprised to hear that I do not believe that these amendments are necessary. First, when considering new Clause 1 and the parts of new Clause 2 which relate to Exchequer revenues, it is important to note that in the Autumn Statement the Government published estimates of the Exchequer impact of the policy as a whole. These costings, which were certified by the independent Office for Budget Responsibility, cover all the changes made to the policy since the Budget as a result of consultation. The total impact of these decisions was set out in table 2.1 of the Autumn Statement document.

To ensure that the Government were being sufficiently transparent, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury wrote to members of the former Taxation of Pensions Bill Committee setting out these costings. I will now outline them for the benefit of the Committee. Further detail on how these costs were calculated is set out in the policy costings document published alongside the Autumn Statement. However, in the letter sent by the Financial Secretary to the Treasury to the members of the former Taxation of Pensions Bill Committee, it was also explained that the costings published as part of the Autumn Statement were based on the same central assumptions that underpinned the costings published at the Budget. Since the Budget, the Government have explored in more detail two aspects of the policy that affect this costing, which takes us to a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Bradley, about the increased cost of salary sacrifice and the increased cost of welfare as a result of the reforms. The Government have produced costings for these, which have been scrutinised by the OBR. In line with standard practice, these are accounted for as changes to the forecast and are not therefore outlined in table 2.1 of the Autumn Statement document.

Given the concern that noble Lords have expressed, it may be helpful if I detail what those figures are. The revisions to the forecast to account for salary sacrifice, which take account of further discussions and considerations since the Budget, are £35 million in 2015-16, £30 million in 2016-17, and £25 million in each of the following three years. When the forecast was revised to account for the increased cost of welfare, the figures rose from £15 million in 2016-17 to £25 million in 2018-19 and 2019-20. The Government have therefore already published the information that these two new clauses are seeking on the Exchequer impacts of various aspects of flexibility, all of which have been certified by the independent OBR. 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 at future fiscal events and the Government of course keep tax policy under continuous review. Therefore, there is no need, in the Government’s view, for further reviews of the Exchequer impacts of the policy as the Government have already committed to keep these under review through the usual processes.

[Lord Bradley]

I am grateful to the Minister and thank him for his explanation of the figures. I want to be absolutely clear that my example of a person who transfers his salary into his pension pot and saves national insurance in the way that I have described has been fully taken into account in these figures.

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, I believe absolutely that they have. If I am wrong in that, obviously I will write to the noble Lord; but that is the purpose of having initially produced the figures on salary sacrifice and subsequently revised them.

I turn to the other elements of the amendments. Amendment 30B also seeks to require that the Government review the distributional impact of pensions flexibility, no less than 18 months after the Bill takes effect. As set out during debate of the Taxation of Pensions Act, pensions flexibility does not have a direct consequential impact on household incomes. Distributional effects will be driven by the choices that individuals make about how and when to take their pensions. In addition, household income is not necessarily a reliable measure of pension wealth, particularly in the years immediately prior to retirement. It is possible that the impacts of this policy could be misrepresented if we were to review them only against the distribution of household income.

Additionally, Amendment 30B would require the Government to publish behavioural analysis. The costing of tax policies often involves an assessment of the behavioural impact of the measure and, in some cases, the capacity for additional tax planning and avoidance behaviour. These assumptions and methodologies are, of course, certified by the independent OBR. However, as a matter of policy, the Treasury considers that making these detailed behavioural assumptions public can have the potential to affect the behaviour they relate to, and as such can be potentially detrimental to policy-making. The policy costing note published alongside the Autumn Statement explains how the costings have been calculated. This is in line with the principles outlined in the government document Tax Policy Making: A New Approach, which was published alongside the June Budget in 2010.

Amendment 30B would also require the Government to review any impact that pensions flexibility might have on the volume of annuity purchases. Data on the sales of annuities will continue to be available through other channels, such as the data published by trade bodies such as the ABI and publications by individual firms. Therefore we do not think that there is going to be any lack of this information being publicly available, so there is no need for a requirement in the Bill to achieve that.

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[Lord Newby]

My Lords, one thing I have not responded adequately to—and I am not sure whether what I am going to say will adequately answer the noble Lord’s point, but I will write to him if I do not—is about salary sacrifice and the question about the £10,000 allowance, which the noble Lord, Lord Bradley, and others, referred to.

The £10,000 allowance is, we think, a sensible middle way to allow the majority of people the flexibility to withdraw or contribute to their pension as they choose from age 55, while also ensuring that individuals do not use the new flexibility to avoid paying tax on their current earnings. However, there are clearly circumstances in which it will be in an individual’s best interests to gain access to part of the pension pot early—at 55 or 56—while by the time they are 60 their circumstances have changed and they can then start contributing again to a pension. We did not want to deny that entirely. Equally, as noble Lords have said, we did not want individuals recycling money out of pension pots just in order to avoid tax. It is therefore a pragmatic compromise figure which we think strikes the right balance.

[Lord Bradley]

I again thank the Minister for his detailed response. In relation to buying out annuities, the Minister is right—the article in the Sunday Times did state that Steve Webb was a Liberal Democrat. However, it also stated that he was the Pensions Minister. I am sure that this is part of the tensions of coalition as we head towards the general election.

I am grateful for the support for this amendment from the noble Lords, Lord Hutton and Lord McKenzie, both of whom are experts in this field and bring great value to our deliberations. I am grateful to the Minister for clarifying some of the points regarding social care, although again I suspect that there may be further devil in the detail that we may debate further this afternoon.

The Minister’s response made the most compelling case for why we need the review brought back to Parliament with all the information gathered in a coherent and digestible way. In his response to our amendment he identified various sources of information in various departments, and it would take great expertise to beaver away and gather all that information into a form that enables enlightened and informed debate, not only in this House but in Parliament generally, and—in terms of transparency—for the public to understand fully the implications of these amendments.

We need to look carefully at the way in which information is gathered, disseminated and presented to Parliament. This amendment was a very good start for the revolution that is likely to take place in pension provision and how freedoms and flexibilities are used by the public. For today, however, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 30A withdrawn.