Pension Schemes Bill
Debate between Lord Bradley and Baroness Drake(9 years, 10 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Bradley
My Lords, this amendment is connected to Amendment 22. We had an extremely interesting debate in Committee on the merits of what is known as the second line of defence, and I am pleased that we are able to return to it today as a result of our amendment.
I preface my brief remarks on this matter with our general approach to the Bill throughout its passage in the House. While we broadly support the new freedoms and flexibilities in the Bill and its related Bill on taxation, we have sought throughout to ensure that the interests of pensioners—customers—are protected in what has often been a very dysfunctional annuities market. Our overriding aim has been to ensure that those protections for the public are in place before the Bill is enacted at the beginning of April.
To return to this specific amendment, we argued in Committee that a second line of defence was vital. We discussed evidence from two reports from the Financial Conduct Authority, quoted in Committee, that the market is often not functioning as it should and is letting consumers down. We believed that action was needed immediately to protect savers when making possibly the most complex financial decision that they will ever have to make.
In Committee, the Minister did not seem to accept that action for a second line of defence should be in place by April this year, when the new freedoms and flexibilities are implemented. Instead, he suggested that, because the FCA is a relatively new body with new powers, and has committed to reviewing all its rules in the first half of this year, we should in effect await the outcome of its deliberations before any further action was taken. In response to the Minister, I said that while I would reflect on what he had said, I believed that the public sought reassurance and the confidence that a second line of defence would give them. That is why we have continued to champion a second line of defence throughout the passage of the Bill in both Houses, as have many pension groups and organisations outside this House.
I and my noble friends therefore welcome the Government’s apparent change of heart today, and the fact that they have recognised the strength of the arguments to protect pensioners that we have been making. It is with pleasure we received, and read, the very welcome letter from the Financial Conduct Authority, dated 26 January, saying that it would ensure the,
“appropriate protection of consumers, accessing their pension saving”.
This is extremely welcome, and starts to put together a proper second line of defence.
At this stage of the debate, though, I have three questions for the Minister. First, as the letter says:
“Subject to agreement of the Board, we are minded that it is appropriate to bring these rules into force on a temporary basis from 6 April, and prior to consultation, to provide important additional protection for consumers”.
Will the Minister confirm that the Board will agree to putting this second line of defence in place and that, at a future stage, the Board may decide that it is not necessary?
Secondly, the letter goes on to say:
“As part of that consultation we will also consult on whether to retain or modify the temporary rules that we are proposing to introduce in April”.
Will the Minister assure the House that, after the temporary period that the Financial Conduct Authority is proposing, there are no circumstances in which it would then remove the second line of defence?
Thirdly, in relation to trust-based schemes, it is my understanding that the Pensions Regulator is responsible for these schemes, not the Financial Conduct Authority. Will the Minister assure the House that similar protections for trust-based defined contribution schemes will be made by the Pensions Regulator, in parallel with the FCA?
The merits for a second line of defence seem now to be accepted. I look forward to the Minister’s responses.
Baroness Drake (Lab)
My Lords, I had a lengthy and impassioned speech prepared on the need for a second line of defence to address the risks that pension savers might make detrimental and irreversible choices when they access their savings. However, this has been tempered by the letter from the FCA, so my contribution is shorter and less passionate as a consequence.
This amendment sets out a duty on the Financial Conduct Authority to protect savers accessing their pension savings when they are engaging with providers during the decision-making and purchasing process. This is distinct from the duty on the FCA to protect savers receiving guidance from designated guidance providers.
The guidance guarantee, now referred to as Pension Wise, is a key measure for helping people navigate the complex retirement options arena from April 2015. There are people working hard to make its delivery a success, as it will provide a very important service to savers. The FCA will expect providers to check whether a customer has used the guidance service and, if not, to encourage them to do so. In popular parlance, this is the first line of defence.
Beyond the guidance stage, the saver has to move to the process of making a decision, and of selecting or purchasing a retirement income route. It is what happens at this stage—the exchange between the consumer and the provider—that is causing so much anxiety and to which the amendment is directed. It puts a duty on the FCA to secure an appropriate degree of protection for the consumer at that stage. This is what is popularly referred to as the second line of defence.
As my noble friend has said, we have now received the letter from Mr Woolard, Director, Strategy and Competition at the FCA, advising that FCA board approval is being sought for this second line of defence. It is minded to bring these rules into force on 6 April 2015, pending a review of all the current regulatory requirements around the customer’s interaction with the providers. The CEO and chair of the FCA have made some thoughtful and welcome speeches that have set the framework for debate in addressing the challenge of poorly functioning financial services markets.
The recent FCA reports on retirement income markets have been hard hitting and on the nail. It is worth reminding ourselves what they observed: annuity sales practices were contributing to consumers missing out on a potentially higher income; consumers’ tendency to buy from their existing provider lowered the potential for higher income; consumers will be poorly placed to drive effective competition; the retirement income market is not working well; and the introduction of greater choice and potentially more complex products will reduce consumer confidence and weaken the competitive pressures on providers to offer good value. The anxiety was that that analysis and the heightened risk of consumer detriment with the advent of the new freedoms would not translate into sufficient regulatory protection. Against that background, the FCA letter is most appreciated, although I await with interest the answers to my noble friend Lord Bradley’s three questions.
The second line of defence is not a total solution to the risk that consumers will make decisions that are not in their interest, but it will make a very important contribution to what we know is a poorly performing market. I therefore welcome the FCA letter and thank the Minister for facilitating its publication.
Pension Schemes Bill
Debate between Lord Bradley and Baroness Drake(9 years, 10 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Bradley
I am grateful for that clarification as, I am sure, is the whole Committee. In moving Amendment 44A I shall speak also to Amendments 47 and 48.
At this Committee stage, we have tabled amendments on all the recommendations of the Delegated Powers Committee. The Government will either accept the recommendations of that committee or put on record why they do not believe that the delegated power in question requires the affirmative procedure. That is what our amendments in this group do. The Delegated Powers Committee recommended that the power in Clause 48(3) be subject to the affirmative procedure as the power contained in it is, to quote from the report, “very significant”, not only in the context of Clause 48 but for the purpose of Chapter 2 of Part 4 as a whole. That is a very fair summary. The power enables the Secretary of State to provide for exceptions from the need to seek independent advice, which is central to ensuring that someone in a defined benefits scheme, for instance, is adequately informed of the risks and rewards of transferring out in order to access their pensions.
The power in Clause 48(7) is equally fundamental, giving as it does the Secretary of State the power to define what counts as “appropriate independent advice”. Our amendment is designed to probe exactly what would be meant by “appropriate independent advice”. Will the scheme trustees or managers be required to assess the appropriateness of the advice received—that in the circumstances of the particular scheme member the recommendation is the right one and transferring out will not harm their chances of having a good requirement income? The alternative is that the scheme trustees or managers will have to check that the advice received by the scheme member comes from someone appropriate who is regulated by the FCA. Our amendment gives the Government the chance to clarify that point. The difference in responsibility and cost is obviously significant.
I acknowledge that the Minister has already been kind enough to write to me, for which I am grateful, and the Government’s response to the Delegated Powers Committee has made it clear that the definition of “appropriate independent advice” will be through a regulation that is subject to the affirmative procedure, although as a consequence not directly part of the primary legislation in this Bill. None the less, it would be very helpful if the Minister could put on record the likely content of the regulation and give as many details as he is able to about it so that it addresses the issues I have raised in the amendments.
Can the Minister also give the Committee an update on the likely timing of that regulation? The response to the Delegated Powers Committee on 6 January says that it is likely to be “in the new year”. Given that it also says that it has to be in place by April, we are safe to assume that the new year does not mean January 2016. However, it would be helpful if the Minister could say when that regulation is likely to be laid so that there can be proper scrutiny of it. I beg to move.
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 Bradley
My Lords, having listened to the Government’s amendments, I am tempted to say that this one is minor and technical and hope it will slip through on the back of that. However, it is not. On the first day in Committee, our first amendment on decumulation was an attempt to ensure that the Government did not lose focus on ensuring that all pension savers obtain a good deal when they look to turn their pension pot into a retirement income. In that instance, we wanted to protect savers from being defaulted into an annuity without a recommendation from an independent broker.
This amendment asks the Government not to lose sight of progress that has been made in getting a better deal for pension savers, despite the sweeping changes enabling freedom of flexibility in accessing pensions that will come into force this April. The cap that has been introduced on charges for work-based pension schemes of 0.75% a year has no equivalent in draw-down products, but from April a great many more savers—perhaps an estimated 320,000—will be using these products to get a retirement income. They should be protected from unfair charges. I repeat: they should be protected from unfair charges. It is welcome that NEST, the National Employment Savings Trust, has launched a consultation on draw-down products and how to ensure that middle and low-income earners have suitable and good-value products available to them. As the consultation rightly says:
“The solutions we as an industry develop over the next few years could determine the lives of millions of people in old age. We absolutely cannot afford to fail consumers … Leaving their retirements to chance is not an option”.
We have been clear throughout that welcoming the Budget freedoms is predicated on good solutions being available for savers in those income brackets, which we hope will happen. A good first step would be to remove the possibility of savers being open to what may be termed rip-off charges. This should apply in the decumulation stage as well as the accumulation stage, because a rip-off charge is a rip-off charge, wherever a consumer finds themselves at the end of it.
What is the evidence that this may happen in the decumulation stage for draw-down products? We already know that charges can be varied and opaque. The report from Which?, The Future of Retirement Income, points out:
“Even for a simple fund structure from a low-cost provider, the annual management charge might be 1% plus an administration fee of £250 per annum, which would cover the cost of income payments and income level reviews, for example. A more common total cost is about 2% p.a. which is similar to that for an investment-backed annuity. Worryingly, we came across cases where the charges for a SIPP package and advice were 4%-4.5%”.
Our amendment would give the Secretary of State the power to address this. The report goes on to point out that the costs are not always clear to the consumer:
“There are also hidden costs, including bid-offer spreads, the cost of sub-funds within the main fund, platform charges etc. Where an actively managed fund is selected, there is a risk that high turnover (churning) would add significantly to the total cost due to the transaction costs involved”.
Remember, this is about a product that is likely to become a great deal more widespread from April. The report therefore recommends that the Government should consider the introduction of a charge cap on the DC decumulation market at the same time as this is made a requirement for auto-enrolment DC schemes.
No one can be quite sure how the market will develop after April, but if the Government do not want to put this in place now, accepting our amendment would give them the power to take action to prevent consumer detriment in a new market in an area that has not always served savers as well as it should. This seems to me to be a sensible step that will protect consumers and ensure that they are not subject to rip-off charges. In that spirit, I hope that the Government will accept this amendment.
Baroness Drake
My Lords, from April 2015, when people reach the age of 55, they will be able to access their defined contribution pension savings as they wish. That will essentially leave them with four choices: full withdrawal of cash, taxed at their marginal rate, less a 25% tax-free lump sum; some kind of income draw-down product, drawing down cash while leaving the remainder invested; taking uncrystallised funds pension lump sums; an annuity purchase; or any combination of the four.
We do not know how the market will evolve in light of the new unprecedented options for pension savers in terms of the retirement products that will be available and what their charges will be. However, we do know that the FCA thinks, first, that the new freedoms could weaken the competitive pressure on providers to offer good value, because people display even more inertia in the face of complexity; and, secondly, that providers have been struggling to complete proper due diligence testing on new products because of the tight timetable. We do not have clarity as to the Government’s thinking on the charges, quality standards and transparency requirements for retirement income products going forward.
Pension Schemes Bill
Debate between Lord Bradley and Baroness Drake(9 years, 10 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Lord Bradley (Lab)
My Lords, decumulation is the process of converting pension savings into retirement income. I hope that, as we deliberate in Committee, we will try to avoid as much jargon on pensions as we possibly can to make it understandable not only to ourselves but to the public outside.
Our new clause on decumulation is aimed at protecting savers who default into an annuity with their same savings provider. At the start of Committee stage it is important to note that we are in a pretty dramatic and fast-changing environment for pensions. We must not forget those parts of the pensions market that are not currently working for consumers as well as they should. The amendment would provide safeguards for those who do not take advantage of the new flexibilities provided by the 2014 Budget changes, and for whom an annuity remains the best product. This may be the case for some who feel that they would still prefer the security of a product that guarantees them a set income for their entire lives, without the difficulty of making predictions about life expectancy. That can still be a very attractive option.
The ABI code of conduct requires members to encourage savers to use the open market option when choosing an annuity. However, 50% of savers still buy an annuity from the company they have already saved with. This situation could be further exacerbated by auto-enrolment, under which the majority will be enrolled by inertia. We know that, as a result of not shopping around, many get a much worse deal than they could have had, so this could have a serious effect on the size of their annuity. The National Association of Pension Funds estimates that those who do not shop around get up to 20% less in their annuity. The Financial Conduct Authority estimates that consumers could be missing out on up to £230 million in additional pension savings because they are not shopping around in the most effective way.
We know that this market has not served consumers well in recent years, and the process remains complex. The Financial Services Consumer Panel recognised this in December 2013, and said that a “‘good’ annuity outcome” might well require expert help. Our new clause would require the recommendation of an independent broker to sell an annuity to someone who has saved with the same scheme. This would protect consumers from getting a bad deal when taking a crucial decision in their lives. As was made clear in Committee in the other place, pension schemes should ensure that any brokerage service they employ on behalf of their members meets best practice in terms of providing members with an assisted pathway through the annuity process, ensuring access to most annuity providers and minimising the costs. Pension schemes have a duty to get the best possible deal for their members, or to do it themselves in-house. Such good practice can be found in pension schemes such as the Royal Mail and the National Employment Savings Trust.
That view flows partly from the significant evidence that the best way to get value for money on an annuity is to “bulk-buy” that annuity on behalf of the cohort of scheme members who are going to retire. For example, let us look further at the National Employment Savings Trust, which requires annuity providers to make sealed bids to provide annuities for those who have saved with NEST. It takes the cohort coming up to retirement and says to the providers, “We have X people. Given their personal circumstances, and taken together collectively, what offer of an annuity will you make?”. This seems a sensible way to proceed. It has the advantage of scale, and the expertise of the same pension scheme that built up the pension pot is used to turn it into a retirement income.
This is a brief opening amendment in the form of a new clause, so I shall summarise the position now. Annuities as they are currently constituted have not been delivering value for money for the whole of the market. The fundamental reason is that half of those coming to the point of annuitisation—turning their pension pot into an income—do not shop around for the best deal because it can be a complex, confusing and difficult process. Because of that and because of the advantages of bulk-buying by a professional expert, it seems sensible, for the consumer to get it right for their retirement income, to empower pension schemes to undertake that responsibility. As the new clause draws on best practice, I hope that the Government will see its merits. I beg to move.
Baroness Drake (Lab)
My Lords, I have some sympathy with the thrust of Amendment 1, under which my noble friend seeks to protect pension savers from purchasing an annuity which is not good value for money or appropriate to their needs. If there was any doubt about the nature of the problems in the annuities market, the recent FCA report has clearly put those to rest. It makes evident the need for assisted paths for consumers through the annuity process. Notwithstanding the new freedoms, annuities still have an important role to play in securing retirement income, and we need the FCA urgently to push ahead with tackling the conduct of providers in the market. With the new freedoms and the anticipated product innovations that will flow from that, the Government and the saver are still very dependent on the market to make them a success and mitigate consumer risk.
The issue of assisting the consumer through the annuity process—the role of the employer, the responsibility of the saver and the role of the provider—is complex. No doubt later in Committee—at least, I hope we will; I hope that an amendment is winging its way—we will debate a second line of defence provision to control the conduct of providers selling retirement income products, including annuities, trying to enhance consumers’ protection when they are in the purchasing process. I hope that we can pursue in more detail how the Government can mitigate the pension saver’s risk when purchasing an annuity, when, I hope, we can get into a wider debate on a second line of defence across all retirement income products.
Lord Bradley
My Lords, the three amendments in this group stand in my name and in the name of my noble friend Lord McAvoy. Amendment 3 would remove the words “or managers” for collective schemes. In doing so, trustees would be required to be in place. Amendment 20 to Clause 37 would require managers to act in the best interests of members of the scheme, which seems an absolute minimum if they are to be relied on. Our proposed new clause sets out that trustees shall have a,
“fiduciary duty towards members of the scheme”.
That is an issue which will be debated here and further, and we believe it is essential for the confidence of schemes going forward.
It is my contention that the Bill does not go far enough on governance. The highest standards of governance are needed for schemes that could be even more opaque to their members than DC schemes are now. They have to manage pooled assets and, within that, conduct smoothing arrangements for the benefit of all members. This silence in the Bill occurs despite the Government’s consultation entitled, Reshaping Workplace Pensions for Future Generations. Paragraph 22 states:
“Collective schemes are complex and can be opaque—because of the indirect relationship between contributions and benefits. This necessitates strong standards of communication and governance. We intend collective schemes to be overseen by experienced fiduciaries acting on behalf of members, taking decisions at scheme level and removing the need for individuals to make difficult choices over fund allocations and retirement income products”.
Failure to require all schemes to have high-quality trustees means that we potentially have some collective DC schemes run by trustees and others where private firms offer them. They could seek to maximise short-term returns that are not necessarily in the best interests of all members. We have consistently argued that all workplace pension schemes must be run by trustees and have a legal duty to prioritise the savers’ interests.
Our proposed new clause would require pension schemes to appoint a “board of independent trustees”. Those trustees would have a fiduciary duty to pension holders that would take preference over any duty owed to shareholders. This change in governance is designed to ensure that members of pension schemes get far better value for money. For example, in its market study, the Office of Fair Trading said that savers were not getting value for money in a contract-based market. A significant reason for that was shareholder interest in contract-based schemes predominating over the interests of savers. Not enough information is available on how schemes are operating and what is available. As has been said, it can be complex and difficult to understand, which is what stops this market functioning in order to bring down those costs.
International evidence, such as that laid out by Chris Curry, director of the Pensions Policy Institute, during the evidence sessions, suggests that a trust-based approach to schemes is preferable and leads to better governance. It would not require a large number of trustees to implement. Of the 200,000 schemes currently estimated to be in place, many are under the management of four or five insurance companies and therefore would be covered by governance boards made up of trustees attached to those boards. Of the remaining pension schemes, progress to trusteeship might be slower. Equally, it might be aided by the amendment to be discussed later when we will encourage scale in terms of pension schemes.
Through these amendments we want to ensure that there is strong and effective governance, that the trustees have a fiduciary duty to look after the interests of members as a priority, and that customers are treated fairly to ensure that their interests are prioritised over those of shareholders where there may be a conflict. The new clause that we have suggested would help to rectify the current shortcomings in governorship and, with the ability to appoint high-quality trustees in whom the members can have absolute faith, strengthen the whole process. I beg to move.
Baroness Drake
My Lords, I rise to support and speak to Amendment 10 in particular. I expressed the view at Second Reading that at some point, unfortunately probably later rather than sooner, the Government will inevitably have to place in statute a clear fiduciary duty on pension providers and asset managers to put savers’ interests first.
Why one goes through all the regulatory complication of setting up independent governance committees, giving them fiduciary responsibilities to monitor the behaviour of private pension providers, while exempting the private providers themselves—the people who make and implement the decisions—from such responsibility is a little beyond me. If the responsibility of the independent governance committees is an attempt to align scheme governance with the interests of savers, why should that responsibility not be put directly on to the decision-makers in the pensions industry? But we are where we are.
John Kay, in his review commissioned by BIS, also concluded that all those looking after someone else’s money or advising on investment should be subject to fiduciary standards of care. Many times from these Benches I have argued the case for extending a clear fiduciary duty to those who have discretion over the management of other people’s money. It is a principle that the Australian financial regulatory system has embraced and applies to retail pension providers, including an unequivocal requirement that conflicts of interest must be resolved in the beneficiaries’ interests.
Each time I try to present the arguments in a slightly different or novel way but increasingly the FCA appears to be providing the arguments for the proposition. We have had numerous reports on how the market is not serving pension scheme savers well, be it legacy schemes, annuities, lack of transparency on charges, and many other examples. The new FCA study, which examined how market conditions may evolve from April 2015, found that greater choice and potentially more complex products will weaken the competitive pressures on providers to offer good value. The chair of the FCA has said that the increase in regulatory rules has failed to prevent misconduct and does not seem to “prevent further problems arising”. The FCA director of enforcement and financial crime, Tracey McDermott, speaking at the FCA’s recent enforcement conference in London, referred to the need for a cultural shift among firms similar to the change in public attitudes whereby drink- driving was, in the past, avoided through fear of being fined, but is now seen as a moral issue.
It is clear from the flow of pronouncements from the FCA that the behavioural and cultural challenge within the pensions industry remains a major issue. They are telling us and demonstrating to us that regulatory rules have failed to deliver the cultures that embrace the ethic of care towards the customer. Time after time, reports, reviews and investigations confirm that the private pensions market is dysfunctional, with a weak demand side that cannot be expected or fails to self-remedy, and where the process of trying to provide for the savers’ interest in a competitive fashion does not work well. One is tempted to ask: how many reports of market failure in the pensions market do we have to receive before it is accepted that writing yet another set of rules will not solve the problem? What is needed is a game-changer to force the pace of change in providers’ behaviour by strengthening in law the principle that they must act in pension savers’ interests.
The advent of auto-enrolment raises the bar. At the heart of the governance structure for the private pension system must be the interests of the pension saver, and the law must require that providers identify and manage conflicts in favour of the saver. An alignment of interests is not sufficient. The saver’s interests must come first. It will be a major regulatory failure of public policy if millions of citizens are auto-enrolled into pension schemes but Parliament has not ensured that sound governance is in place.
Turning specifically to collective benefit schemes, which Amendment 10 targets, the case for the oversight of the management of such schemes resting with trustees with a clear fiduciary duty to the members of the scheme that takes precedence over other interests is even more compelling. Collective DC schemes are more complex in that they are designed to smooth income and manage intra- and intergenerational risk-sharing between members. The individual does not have a well defined pot over which they have individual ownership. Consequently, transparency is a key challenge and provides a potential breeding ground for conflicts of interest. Collective benefit schemes do not automatically guarantee higher retirement incomes. In order to be sustainable, collective DC schemes need scale, an assured flow of new members, full transparency and, in particular, excellent governance. If these schemes are not well run or if risks are unfairly shifted—for example, across different age cohorts—young savers could be subject to lower payouts.
The Bill has a significant number of delegated powers so there is much still to be understood. On governance for collective DC schemes particularly, the Bill is largely silent. But the complexity of what needs to be addressed is captured in Clauses 9 to 18. The Government appear to recognise the particular nature of the governance challenge in collective benefit schemes and the possibility that things could go wrong because they have added Clause 37 to enable the Secretary of State to impose a duty on managers of collective benefit schemes to act in members’ best interests. But that is not sufficient. If the Government are serious about encouraging and building collective benefit pension provision, the governance rules have to be robust right from the very beginning. The risks are too great to do otherwise and that means requiring a body of independent trustees with a clear fiduciary duty to the members of the scheme, which takes precedence over any other duty, to oversee the running of such collective benefit schemes.
Lord Bradley
If I might comment briefly, as the amendment says, any merger has to be in the best interests of the members. It is not being forced if that is not in their best interests. I am not aware of the pace of change; what I am saying is that the industry is looking at those measures. The fundamental point is that it is in the interest of the members, not the scheme itself.
Baroness Drake
My Lords, I have sympathy with the thrust of my noble friend’s Amendment 7. Scale can be very important in influencing efficiency of pension provision and value for money for the pension saver. We also know that there is a significant tail of small DC and DB schemes which could actually increase if we begin to see an accelerated closure of trust-based DC schemes in response to the new freedoms. That is a problem to be monitored and addressed as part of protecting savers’ interests.
In principle, putting small inefficient schemes into large efficient schemes is a good thing but as the noble Lord, Lord German, flagged, the path to achieving that can sometimes reveal some real difficulties. As a trustee I have experienced this. The problem arises when considering what a small scheme is transferred into. In real life, some real pressures come to bear. For example, an employer may be keen to see members of a closed, small, trust-based DC scheme bulk transfer into a contract-based product, but if that product is a personal pension which falls outside the scope of the new charges cap or the quality standards, the value for money and governance benefits on transfer may not be so clear-cut. Equally, the trust scheme rules of small schemes, even in DC, may have some beneficial provisions. For example, the employer may meet the administration costs, so some of the costs of that DC provision are met by the employer. What happens to that protection on transfer?
Certainly, the principle of promoting scale consequentially to promote value for money is a good one. However, if there is to be a provision to require trustees to transfer their schemes in certain circumstances, there needs to be regulatory clarity about the standards of schemes into which schemes can be transferred or directed by the regulator—whether there are nominated aggregators or whatever into which a regulator could so direct if it felt that something was quite small and unsustainable. The principle is sound but, like any principle, the path of getting there sometimes needs some additional support. I flag those up as issues that would need to be captured in making any regulatory provision about forcing the pace on scale.
I can speak only from an anecdotal basis to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord German, about evidence. I cannot provide any evidence. I can provide only experience. As employers have tackled their big DB benefits and addressed auto-enrolment, I think they are looking to consolidate or transfer out small schemes, so I expect this to be a growing issue—but I express that view on an anecdotal basis.