Pension Schemes Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Freud and Lord Flight

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 21st November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Flight (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 29 and 40 are amendments to opposition Amendments 28 and 39. They would both add after “members’ funds”,

“, beyond the normal capped pension scheme charges,”.

The point is really very simple: without this change, the opposition amendments would have the undesirable —and I think unintended—effect of hampering the orderly exit of the sponsor. I am sure that is not the intention behind them.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud) (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 27 would require information on any charge cap to be included in a master trust’s continuity strategy. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, for making it clear that this is a series of probing amendments. I think it makes sense for me to go through what the process is on the continuity strategy.

One of the criteria for a master trust to be authorised by the Pensions Regulator is that it must have an adequate continuity strategy. That strategy is then kept under review on an ongoing basis. A continuity strategy is a document that addresses how the interests of the scheme members will be protected if, in the future, the scheme experiences a triggering event—an event that could put the scheme at risk. The strategy must include a section on the scheme’s levels of administration charges in a manner that will be specified in regulations in due course, as well as any such other information as may be set out in those regulations. Our intention is that the regulations will set out the detail and manner of the information to be provided on the administration charges in the strategy. We want schemes to provide information such as the charge levels per arrangement or fund, any discounts they apply to charge levels and on what basis these discounts are made.

Pension Schemes Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Freud and Lord Flight

Monday 21st November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

The money cannot come out of their pots, but the Pensions Regulator will be looking to transfer those pots to another master trust. The protection that this amendment and my noble friend are suggesting is almost conditioned by what we watch in the defined benefit market. This is a different situation, where there are protected pots. There may be costs in a catastrophic situation, but they will not fall on members, and it is not the job of government to protect non-members from getting into a mess.

[Lord Flight]

Is it not very simple? The manager of the master trust would go bust just like any other business can go bust. It would go into liquidation and, to the extent that it owed debts to the suppliers of electricity or other such things, they would suffer.

Pension Schemes Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Freud and Lord Flight

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 21st November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

Yes, I think that we will come back to that issue—and, if we do not, I shall make sure to write to the noble Lord before the end of the Committee stage.

[Lord Flight]

My Lords, I am pleased to hear the Minister advise that Clause 39 will be used for further consultation, and that he is certainly minded to introduce a carve-out for AVCs. I would like to push the case for NAME as well, particularly as regards the arguments made by the university schemes. However, I understand the Government’s reservations here. Considerable further discussions with the industry are needed. On the basis of such constructive use of Clause 39, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Flight]

My Lords, should Amendment 12 be in the Act? Generally the Government and the Secretary of State have responsibility to see that something like TPR is funded and it is not solely a master trust issue. I question whether this should be in the Bill.

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, these amendments all concern the resources, financial or otherwise, which will be required to ensure that the Pensions Regulator can implement and operate the master trust authorisation regime.

Amendment 11, tabled by my noble friend Lord Flight, would change the wording of Clause 4 so that subsection (5)(b) reads:

“The Secretary of State may make regulations setting out … any application fee payable to the Pensions Regulator”,

instead of “the” application fee.

The current provision in the Bill does not require the Secretary of State to set an application fee but it is important for the Government to be clear to the industry about their intentions now—and the Government intend to make regulations that specify an application fee. It is also important for the Secretary of State to have the ability to change the application fee in the future. That is one reason for specifying this fee in regulations. The master trust industry is developing, and will continue to do so, as it adapts to the new requirements of this regime. As the industry changes, it is entirely feasible that the cost to the regulator of assessing applications for authorisation may change too.

The fee serves two key purposes. First, it ensures that the Pensions Regulator can recover the costs of processing applications from master trust authorisation without indirectly placing those costs on the wider pensions community it regulates. Without an authorisation fee it would have to recover these costs through the funding provided by the general levy, and this would not be fair given that a large number of the schemes which pay into this levy are not master trust schemes. Secondly, the fee ensures that schemes seeking to become authorised submit carefully considered applications by acting as a deterrent to submitting multiple applications.

As I hope I have explained, it is important to make provisions for regulations to specify an application fee and that the industry is clear that the Government intend to use this power. The Bill as it stands achieves this intent.

Both Amendments 12 and 82 require that a report on the subject of the Pensions Regulator’s resources is laid before the Houses of Parliament before the provisions within Part 1 of the Bill are commenced. Amendment 82 would additionally require that Parliament is presented with a report about the impacts of the master trust authorisation regime. The additional report required by Amendment 82 is described as,

“a comprehensive assessment of the impact of Part 1”.

The other report is,

“a report demonstrating that sufficient resources are available to the Pensions Regulator to carry out the requirements on the Regulator pursuant to”,

this Act. The focus of Amendment 12 is very similar, but it requires that the resources report should address the resources required to conduct the regulator’s functions under Clause 5.

Universal Credit

Debate between Lord Freud and Lord Flight

Tuesday 19th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

I thank the noble Lord. His sums on this are right, although, along with him, I am not sure whether that is a compliment or the opposite. With the figures that we are looking at, we are disentangling legacy systems—which are pretty odd in themselves—from the new system. One fact about the very big ALMO figures is that ALMOs want rent a week in advance, so it is not surprising that a lot of people are in arrears when you compare them with housing associations, which take the rent four weeks in arrears. That is the kind of thing that I have to disentangle.

[Lord Flight (Con)]

My Lords, the issue has been raised before, but housing associations, as well as councils, are suffering major rent arrears. When the Government have sorted out the meaning of all the data, I would just ask that they do not rule out returning to providing direct payment of housing subsidies to landlords, because clearly it is a problem for housing associations if they are short of income. I add my congratulations to the Minister for remaining in seat.

[Lord Freud]

Let me be absolutely clear why we are doing this. It is of course very convenient for housing associations to be paid directly by the state, but it is incredibly inconvenient for claimants to then move from being out of work to being in work. Our whole drive is to break that barrier and get rid of all those artificial barriers to people going into work. It is something that we need to work on and get right, so that the transformation is made easily. The basic, underlying philosophy is more important than the convenience of housing associations.

Families: Work Incentives

Debate between Lord Freud and Lord Flight

Tuesday 27th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

Universal credit is a wide-ranging transformation of the welfare system, so it is difficult to pick isolated elements. It is now rolling out rapidly. At the same time, we are building a support network incorporating, among other things, universal support delivered locally. One of the key factors is that it delivers a gross value to this society of £7 billion every year. One reason it does that is that it directs its support far more efficiently at the people who need it most. The other thing it does is to make sure that it is always worth working and it is always worth working more. Finally, I try to keep the House up to date with universal credit developments because it is a really important transformation. I commit again to do that. I would like to find a way to do that in the Chamber, as I did a couple of months ago.

[Lord Flight (Con)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that 30 hours of free childcare is one of the biggest incentives available? A huge disincentive has been where working mothers have to pay for childcare out of after-tax earnings and what is left over is scarcely worth having, so for mothers with children, free childcare is fundamental.

[Lord Freud]

Clearly one thing that has happened in universal credit is that the work allowances, as the noble Baroness pointed out, have come down. On the other hand, we have increased some of the costs that are directly tied to work incentives around childcare. As my noble friend pointed out, the effect of doubling free childcare from 15 hours to 30 hours is worth £2,500 per child per year. Another element of universal credit—childcare support going up from 70% to 85%—is worth in excess of £1,000 per child per year. There are real supports coming in for parents who need them.

Pensions: Draw-down Charges

Debate between Lord Freud and Lord Flight

Tuesday 9th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I imagine that quite a lot of noble Lords in the House today will remember the amendment we made to ensure that we would get transparency of charging, and we are working on that process. That is for accumulation funds, but there is no reason why we should not introduce the same thing for decumulation funds, if that is appropriate.

[Lord Flight (Con)]

My Lords, the last Government introduced some really useful reforms for people saving for their pensions, and I trust the new Government will continue in that vein. I would simply make the point that it would be more useful if the Government were to put pressure on those firms providing products to have a reasonable charging structure, rather than seek to achieve this by legislative means. It seems to me that there is a very strong moral case for the Government so to do.

[Lord Freud]

We are doing that, as exemplified by the new Pensions Minister meeting the industry and working with it to make sure that it produces the right level of charging. The Government and the FCA are able to monitor that to see that we get appropriate and fair charges.

Universal Credit

Debate between Lord Freud and Lord Flight

Monday 24th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

We have a system with the spare room subsidy where there is support at a local level through discretionary housing payment, and this is exactly the kind of case where you would expect to see that payment made.

[Lord Flight (Con)]

Can the Minister tell the House how many more people are in employment as a result of the incentives offered by universal credit?

[Lord Freud]

We have some financial incentives within universal credit to encourage people to go into work compared with the legacy system. The best and most recent data we have show that over a six-month period, 69% of people would have had some work in universal credit compared with 65% in the comparable JSA cohort.

Jobseeker’s Allowance

Debate between Lord Freud and Lord Flight

Monday 21st July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

Apprenticeships are a cornerstone of this Government. Overall, we have had more than 1.1 million extra apprenticeships for youngsters since the election—a 40% increase on the equivalent period before the election, although I acknowledge that the previous Government were also pushing up the apprenticeship rate.

[Lord Flight (Con)]

My Lords, the figures on employment are extremely good news but the data on productivity, so far, are not quite such good news. Does the Minister have any views on why productivity has been so slow to increase? Might it have anything to do with Labour’s tax credits subsidising wages?

Housing: Discretionary Housing Payment

Debate between Lord Freud and Lord Flight

Wednesday 9th April 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I am not sure of the exact number of evictions, but I do not think that there are very many at all, if any. Clearly it is a matter of great concern. I can let the noble Baroness know that the data from the Homes and Communities Agency, which are based on the 266 largest housing associations with more than 1,000 homes, show that the average arrears in the final quarter of last year—the third quarter of the financial year—fell to 3.9% from 4.1% in the previous quarter and that rent collection rates for the year stood at 99%.

[Lord Flight (Con)]

The Minister will be aware that in central London and, in particular, the borough of Westminster—and I declare an interest as my wife is a councillor—there have been cases where very substantial housing benefit amounts have had to be paid particularly to house those categories that the local authority is obliged to house. Is there any system or intent to limit the amount of housing benefit that can be paid on an individual property?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, my noble friend draws attention to the point that we have introduced a cap on the amount of housing benefit to stop the very large amounts that were paid on local housing allowance.

Pensions Bill

Debate between Lord Freud and Lord Flight

Wednesday 26th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

Various figures have been talked about, but I do not think I can pre-empt the answer to that question, which will be issued very soon.

In contrast to legislating radically to change the market, we see pot follows member as a way of building on the existing automatic enrolment structure quickly to reach a point where transferring pots is an integral part of the industry. Pot follows member does not prevent industry from innovating in future. Indeed, as individuals become more engaged in pension saving, they may want to be more involved in deciding where their pension pot is and in choosing a preferred scheme.

In response to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hutton, there is even scope to introduce an aggregator in future if there is demand for it, so we are not closing any doors by pursuing this route now.

[Lord Flight]

I think that the Minister just said it, but can he confirm what I view as a crucial point, which is that the individual is still free to choose where he might wish to place his consolidated pension savings and that we are talking only about the default option? Therefore, as people become more informed, some may choose not to consolidate in their employer’s scheme.

[Lord Freud]

I can confirm my noble friend’s question—or I can give the answer to confirm it.

At this point in time, when we are just starting out with automatic enrolment and successfully getting people saving for the first time, we need to make it as easy as possible for them to build their pension. We need to use inertia in the right way. That means moving a small pension pot to the current live pot where the individual can see it growing, rather than sending it off to a scheme with which the individual has no engagement and in which they have no interest.

Now is not the time to break the link between the individual and his or her employer. Automatic enrolment is going well, with 3 million individuals newly saving and less than 10% opting out. It is reinforcing the workplace pension as a key element of the benefit package that employers offer their staff after decades of decline in occupational pensions.

I have heard the argument that these amendments are designed to give the Government another option, which appears on the surface to be a generous approach. Providing the Government with greater flexibility is one thing, but listening to the debate today, I suspect that few on the Opposition Benches want the Government to have the flexibility to chose anything but the aggregator model.

In practice, the amendments will leave us in limbo and bring back uncertainty at a time when industry is beginning to get behind, and position itself to deliver, pot follows member. As my honourable friend in the other place announced on Monday, officials are currently exploring the feasibility of using HMRC’s PAYE data and system to help us to deliver a secure, efficient and straightforward pot-matching element to implement the process.

In response to the assertion of the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, that pot follows member would be hard to set up, we have recently had some very positive workshops with industry representatives and HMRC. The model is already inspiring some exciting and innovative approaches to transferring money with an employee as they move jobs. The cost of the transfer was specifically mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Drake. It will be the same for an aggregator as for pot follows member. Altus has challenged the claim that pension transfers are too hard and too expensive by stating that transfers for ISAs and funds cost £1 or less, and that this can be replicated for pension transfers.

After two years of discussion and debate on this issue, even if we cannot agree with the Opposition on the right delivery model, I hope that we can agree that we need to take a positive step forward. On the “pause to reflect” point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hutton, I do not believe that we are rushing into this measure. We first consulted more than two years ago and followed up with two policy papers. We also held extensive discussions with industry and consumer groups within that period. I urge the noble Lords to withdraw their amendment to allow us to work together, and work with industry, to make automatic transfers a reality.

Pensions Bill

Debate between Lord Freud and Lord Flight

Monday 16th December 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Freud]

I think that in practice it will be a mean average. However, I will make that absolutely clear.

By withdrawing the facility to build a pension above the flat rate and modernising the system, removing elements such as savings credit and derived entitlement that no longer reflect the needs of the working-age population, we are able to fund the single-tier pension and improve the outcomes of groups such as the self-employed, carers and low earners, who have historically seen lower state pensions. It follows, therefore, that there are two means by which we could apply the new state pension to existing pensioners.

First, we could simply increase the pension of all existing pensioners to the full single-tier rate, if they are currently receiving less. In response to the question asked by my noble friend Lord Flight, we estimate that this would cost around £10 billion.

[Lord Flight]

Per annum?

[Lord Freud]

It would be £10 billion per annum.

Child Poverty

Debate between Lord Freud and Lord Flight

Tuesday 14th May 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I could not agree more. One of the most dismaying things that I have ever read is the 2007 UNICEF report that put us right at the bottom in terms of child well-being. The latest report from 2011 shows us crawling up four places, but we have a long way to go and we need to find the right ways in which to help children genuinely to get out of poverty.

[Lord Flight]

My Lords, is not the related problem of feral children who engage in gang warfare and drug dealing and whose parents are not parenting properly even more serious? The solution to that is shown to be provided increasingly by the new technical colleges which motivate such children and teach them a skill. They then start to want to learn generally. That is the sort of measure that really addresses our problems rather than just giving out money.

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, we are in the middle of a genuine consultation on how to tackle child poverty. Maintaining the income measure so that we know what is happening but getting at the measures that will make a real underlying difference to entrenched poverty is absolutely vital in that exercise.

Youth Unemployment

Debate between Lord Freud and Lord Flight

Monday 14th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

I am sure that the noble Lord will agree that the lump of labour fallacy is not how one should run an unemployment policy and that a competitive employment approach is the right approach. The way that one achieves that is by skilling up the workforce so that people can take jobs. That, in itself, expands the economy by more than it would otherwise expand. I am sorry that the noble Lord does not agree. I know there are noble Lords on the Benches opposite who dislike the lump of labour fallacy as much as I do.

[Lord Flight]

My Lords, the apprenticeship scheme is already achieving a lot and can achieve a lot more, but one of the problems is that when people come off jobseeker’s allowance their pay on an apprenticeship is very modest and they often cannot afford the travel costs. The Mayor of London is happily providing the travel costs for apprenticeships in London. Will the Minister look at expanding this where it is needed elsewhere in the country?

[Lord Freud]

I will look at that because one of the central thrusts of our policy is to ramp up apprenticeships. One of the most encouraging signs I saw when I visited a work programme contractor the other day was the way that having sustained outcomes—long-term jobs—is driving it towards putting youngsters into apprenticeships. That is a very happy fact pulling them together, and I will very happily look at anything we can do to reinforce the drive to apprenticeships.

Retirement Age

Debate between Lord Freud and Lord Flight

Monday 5th September 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, as the noble Baroness pointed out, we debated this in some depth when we looked at the Bill. Those concerns, expressed around the House, were taken very seriously. The Secretary of State responded at Second Reading in another place by saying that we needed,

“to implement the change fairly and manage the transition smoothly”.—[Official Report, Commons, 20/6/11; col. 50.]

We are looking at how best to do that. Should there be legislative changes, they will of course come to this House to be considered in due course.

[Lord Flight]

My Lords, I urge the Government to accelerate to a retirement age of 70, not just on grounds of longevity and fitness but on fundamental economic grounds. It is entirely natural, if you have an ageing population and wish to keep economic growth up, that the workforce should remain the same through people working longer. Finally, the highest growth in new jobs now is among people over 65, so this is a reality in the workplace.

[Lord Freud]

Yes, my Lords, it will be extremely expensive if we do nothing. In the past five years we have already seen real expenditure on pensions go up by £20 billion to £81 billion a year. If we do nothing, the projections are that age-related spending will go up to more than 5.5 per cent by the middle of the century. We must do something about it. That is why we have this consultation to look at the best way of moving the pension age upwards to reflect the changes in ageing.

Pensions Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Freud and Lord Flight

Tuesday 1st March 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Flight]

I echo the comments of the noble Baroness. One of our failings as a people is that, because people are decent, we try to provide for everything and clutter it up to the extent that the system becomes difficult and expensive to operate. I was interested to note, in seeking to check my state pension entitlements, that the office that you approach got them wrong; we had a pleasant correspondence. I hate to think, even as we stand, that in people’s combination of straightforward state pension, SERPS and whatever else they may have, the records are all over the place. We may sit here and think that it is lovely, but actually it is a shambles.

I can well imagine that, if you start adding all sorts of groups and special things out of decency, you will get, as the noble Baroness described, a huge increase in bureaucracy. It strikes me that pensions is one area that has suffered in this country from too much complexity. My view is that the issues raised need addressing, but that they will have to be addressed in a separate box through welfare arrangements.

Finally, I still take the view that when the arrangements came in after the war, the age of 65 then was something like 78 today in terms of equivalent fitness and health. I desperately want to see a decent state pension for everyone at the age of 70 that will lift them right away from dependency, pension credits and everything else. I should like to see things tidied up, slimmed down and done as cheaply as possible to achieve that as soon as possible. It strikes me that for the overwhelming majority, that is the need. Although there are cases of people who have done heavy work with physical demands and whose bodies have worn out, the great majority of people will be pretty fit until they are 70.

[Lord Freud]

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, for tabling this amendment and for giving us the opportunity to debate a key concern about increasing the state pension age and longevity. I use the soft “g”, whereas I notice that the noble Lord uses the hard “g”. We probably differ on other things as well. The noble Baroness raised the question of what older people want and whether they want to work longer. Research has found that people want to return to work, whether for financial, personal or practical reasons, and will find ways to do so if they are motivated, have recent work experience and if illhealth does not act as a barrier.

In essence, the amendment is about whether it is fair for the state pension age to be the same for everyone irrespective of their circumstances or whether we should have a variable state pension age for certain groups. To echo what my noble friend Lord Flight said, one of our aims—which is in common with previous Governments—is to simplify an extremely complicated pensions system. The Bill contains various measures to simplify, from the abolition of the fiendishly complicated and fascinating PUCODIs, to which we will come shortly, the flexibility to consolidate additional pension—