Pensions Bill

Debate between Lord Hutton of Furness and Lord Turner of Ecchinswell

Wednesday 26th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Turner of Ecchinswell (CB)]

My Lords, we have before us this afternoon a series of interconnected issues —the one of aggregation versus pot follows members, the issue of charge caps and the issue of transparency of charges. They are all related, because they are all to do with the absolute importance of getting value for money for pensioners. When we did the work of the Pensions Commission some eight years ago, the commissioners had two main concerns about the existing system of private pension provision. The first was a low level of participation and savings, and the second was very poor value for money—the phenomenon of many people, particularly those working for small and medium-sized enterprises and on a lower income, who paid fees such that by the time they came to retirement 25%, 30% or even 40% of their entire pension pot had disappeared in the fees charged to them.

Auto-enrolment addresses the issue of participation and, to a degree, that of cost, because it has removed some of the selling costs involved. It is essential to address the other issues driving costs, of which one is the proliferation of pots and the administration cost that comes with it. Therefore, it is good that there is a strong consensus that we need some form of policy intervention to arrive at a better consolidation of pots. I would accept that it could be done either way—by pot follows member or by aggregators—but I have not been convinced by the arguments that pot follows member is the superior route.

Part of the logic originally put forward, as the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, has said, was I think completely false—the idea that, if we had aggregation, we had to limit the transfer of the pots to only £2,000 versus a much higher transfer amount that would be allowed for pot follows members. There was absolutely no logic to that assumption. Indeed, I stress the point that there is no logic in any limit on transfers at all. The logic put forward by the impact assessment is that we need to avoid too much concentration of provision in this industry, so that a cap on transfers makes sure that the business is shared around in a fair fashion for lots of different providers. But it is very clear from the OFT work that this is not a market in which market competition works well, and the aim is not to have competition for its own sake; having a large number of competitors for its own sake is not an end. Competition is a good thing if it produces better value for consumers. If it is the case that aggregation into a relatively small number of aggregators will result in lower costs to savers, that should be our preferred route—one that is best for customers, not one that tries to spread the business around as a form of fairness to those already providers in the market. As a very thoughtful paper produced by the Centre for Policy Studies put it:

“The proposed pot size limit on transfers serves no consumer purpose: it should be scrapped”.

If we accept the logic that we should be allowing full transfers of whatever amount people have to enable us to get to what the Secretary of State called one big fat pot, that highlights one of the real dangers in pot follows member and makes it even greater—the danger that people can see their funds transferred into a higher charge scheme. Suppose someone has been in a NEST-administered scheme with one employer, paying 50 basis points—0.5%—for a default fund investment and then changes jobs and moves to a new employer who has chosen a scheme with a higher charge rate—perhaps 75 or 100 basis points. They will have originally made a decision to accept auto-enrolment on the basis of one set of charges but now we decide, in an Act of Parliament, to transfer them to somewhere where they will face higher charges in a way which, as I highlighted earlier, has not just a marginal but a huge effect on the amount of money they pay in charges and, therefore, on their pension for the whole of their retirement.

If we were committed to having in place very robust rules on the charge cap—this is why the issues before us this afternoon are somewhat linked—so that, for instance, we were confident that, if you had pot follows member, you would be going from a 50 basis point fund in NEST to a 50 basis point fund in where you had been transferred to, I accept that the decision might be a bit more balanced, although I think the other arguments that the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, put forward would still apply. However, we do not have that robust commitment in relation to the principle of a charge cap, let alone that it should be set at something like 0.5%. In the absence of that, we should not preclude the option of aggregation, which may well prove a more effective route to get to the low costs that we require above all for savers.

[Lord Hutton of Furness (Lab)]

My Lords, I am happy to have the opportunity to make a brief contribution to the debate on this amendment. It is the first time that I have put my name to an amendment in this House. I have done so because I believe that this is a very important point in the progress of the Bill. Clause 33 is to be welcomed in principle. It is the first time that a Government have addressed the problem of the large number of small pension pots that are out there. We need a solution to that problem, so I absolutely welcome the Government’s attention to this policy. We all know that one of the by-products of auto-enrolment —it is a very good policy which clearly at this early stage is encouraging more people to save—is that we will see many more of these small pots created. It is certainly not in the interests of pension savers for these small pots simply to stay where they are.

I do not want to repeat the very able arguments put by my noble friend on the Front Bench, by my noble friend Lady Drake and, indeed, by my noble friend Lord Turner, but I will make a slightly different point. Your Lordships’ House has heard the technical arguments, which are complicated and difficult to digest. I come at this debate from a slightly different angle, having been a former Pensions Minister. There are many other former Ministers in this House and I hope that the international fraternity of former Ministers, who are represented so well in this House, will understand this point. There comes a moment in the gestation of any policy when it is necessary to take a step back to be sure about it and to satisfy yourself that the policy is the right one—particularly given the fact that, as my noble friend Lord Turner said, if we do not amend the Bill, we will make the transfer of these pension pots compulsory and run the risk that people could lose out. That is a real hazard of which we need to be aware. In my experience, the best time to take that pause is before you take that step; you should not to do so once you are committed to it, perhaps irrevocably, and when some people will lose out as a result.

I have been in this House and another place long enough to know the difference between a destructive amendment and a helpful one. I definitely would not have put my name to this amendment if I thought that it was in any way a torpedo below the waterline of the Government’s policy. It gives the Government the opportunity to take stock of the situation. There are serious concerns about the impact assessment undertaken to support the policy. Many others have spoken of their concerns about the impact assessment. It would be a misstep on the part of this House to take a decision on the basis of what we have been presented with. The impact assessment is simply not reliable enough.

All the amendment does is invite the Government to take another look at this policy. It does not rule out pot following member, if that is what the Government are committed to doing; it simply gives them the opportunity, without coming back to this place, to follow the path of aggregation. Many of us believe that the opportunities of aggregation have not been fairly and fully explored by the Government. We should look again at the issue of aggregation, but I do not want to mandate that as a policy for the Government. That would not be right, but it would be absolutely sensible and in the interests of millions of pension savers for us, at this very late hour, to take a step back—not to rule out the possibility that this might be the eventual path that we follow, but to allow us, and Ministers in particular, to take another look at the benefits of aggregation. I genuinely think that that would be the right course of action for Ministers to take at this moment, and I hope that the House agrees with that.