Pensions Bill

Debate between Viscount Eccles and Baroness Drake

Wednesday 26th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Drake]

I do not intend to make my contribution because I do not think there is anything I can add to what the noble Lord, Lord Turner, has said. However, as I have never been a Minister I am not familiar with the dark art of crafting ministerial syntax, so perhaps I could take this opportunity to ask the Minister a question before he responds.

I have before me the Written Ministerial Statement, which says:

“Last year, we consulted on whether to cap charges in the default funds of schemes used for automatic enrolment, and the Government remains committed to seeing this policy through during the life of this Parliament”.—[Official Report, Commons, 24/2/14; col. 11WS.]

My simple question is: does the phrase,

“seeing this policy through during the life of this Parliament”,

mean that the Government will introduce a charge cap before the election in 2015? A simple yes or no answer would be helpful.

[Viscount Eccles]

My Lords, I had not really intended to intervene. I have not played any part in this Bill since Second Reading, but I just want to draw attention to the fact that there is a difference, in my opinion, between price control and transparency.

I am 100% in favour of transparency. Perhaps I should declare that I have a very complicated pension situation. I have been in defined benefit schemes and money purchase schemes and I have a SIPP. I have also been the trustee of probably half a dozen pension schemes. I have done transfers of people under TUPE in the Local Government Pension Scheme. So I have had a lot of reasons to worry about the amount of somebody’s pension fund that is absorbed by costs. I am totally on board with complete transparency on that issue.

However, that is a different matter from price control. The problems in this market, which I fully agree has very considerable aspects of dysfunctionality, are created, in part at least, by the incredibly complicated structure of pensions that we have created, in both the public and private sectors, over many years. It is a very complicated subject and of course there are people who take advantage of that complexity, I completely agree. There are also people who are so frightened by the complexity that they do not know when they are getting value for money and when they are not.

That is my point: there is a great difference between a market which by its transparency enables people to see whether or not they are getting value for money and a market in which there is price control. Picking a figure for the price control would be a very foolish thing for any Government to do.