Pension Schemes Bill [Lords]

Aaron Bell Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion & Programme motion: House of Commons
Wednesday 7th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Gordon (Richard Thomson), who made a lot of important points. It is also a pleasure and a novelty for me to speak without a time limit, but I will try not to test the House’s patience too much.

This is a very important Bill that delivers on our manifesto commitments and has consumer welfare at its heart, and I am glad that it largely enjoys cross-party support. I welcome the speeches from around the Chamber. I particularly welcome the fact that colleagues from the 2019 intake are speaking in the debate, and I see that there are another three of them yet to speak. Either we are not as young as we look, or we have taken the advice to heart that it is never too early to start planning for retirement.

As a member of the all-party parliamentary group on pension scams and someone who has a general interest in these matters, I am pleased to speak in favour of the important work that the Government have been undertaking. This important legislation will benefit members of the public and help people to plan for their future. It will have an important impact on people saving into pensions for their retirement and ensure that reckless bosses cannot gamble with people’s savings. It will transform the way that people get information about their retirement savings, and it will empower the Pensions Regulator by making it tougher and making its guidance clearer.

We have come a long way on pensions in the last decade, and particularly on automatic enrolment, which most colleagues welcome, but in some ways, we are still in the 20th century. Some pension schemes still provide once-a-year statements. That might well reflect the view that pensions are a long-term investment, and we do not want people to panic as their value goes up and down week by week, but when those statements are frequently being sent to old addresses, it is a problem. People have an average of 11 jobs throughout their career, and with automatic enrolment, they are now likely to have nearly as many pension pots. We really need to bring this into the digital age. At present, these information failures make it harder for individuals to get a holistic view of the pensions they are building up, even if they have the help of a financial adviser. Control over our pension provision, which is often our largest financial asset, is hugely important, and the pension dashboards will be a huge step forward for consumers.

Just to pick up on something my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) said, making charges more visible to everybody would be a huge benefit, because sunlight is often the best disinfectant. It will drive out schemes that are not competitive and push people into better-value schemes. Also, the recent reforms we have made mean that individuals can choose to bear more responsibility for risk and decision making, so it is right that they should have access to the information they need to make those informed choices. That will let them plan better for retirement and enable them to have good financial wellbeing as they get older.

I have heard the concerns from the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Neil Gray) and others about the dashboards, but I would say to him that I think regulation and legislation in all fields must go where the consumer is. A paragraph from the Which? report of February 2018 on dashboards states:

“It is clear that even if the government was to decide that there should only be a single government-run dashboard, other private sector dashboards would continue to develop outside of the regulated market. These may rely on screen-scraping or other potentially unsecure forms of transmitting customer data. They would even be able to screen-scrape data from the official government-run dashboard. If there were any problems with private sector dashboards then the consumer would have no easy method of obtaining redress, as they would remain outside regulation and outside the remit of the Financial Ombudsman Service”.

I cannot really put it better than that. Private sector dashboards are inevitable. Indeed, there are commercial products out there are already, looking at consolidation and so on. Drawing on my own experience in FinTech, these private sector solutions are likely to be more innovative and more responsive to consumer needs than the Government-driven solution.

[Neil Gray]

I take what the hon. Gentleman says, and I do not disagree. I understand that commercial dashboards are coming; that is not where the dispute is. What I and others across the House are looking for is for the Government to invest in and have a period to allow the Money and Pensions Service dashboard to bed in as the default position for consumers to go to, where they know they can get trusted impartial information about their pensions, and then to allow the commercial dashboards to go from there. That is the very reasonable position that the Lords took, and I think that we should agree to it in Committee. I ask the hon. Member to reflect on that.

[Aaron Bell]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, and I ask the Minister to comment on that in his summing up, but I reiterate that we have to go where the consumer is. I understand the point he is making. We need clear supervision and a robust regulatory framework, as provided for in the Bill, and we need a non-commercial service, but we have to be realistic: people are going to go to these services first, and they are already springing up. We cannot be constantly trying to catch up. In this regard, I note the earlier intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Mr Vara), who is not in his place at the moment. These dashboards will encourage consolidation, and that may or may not be a good thing in specific cases, so we must continue to ensure that consumers have access to appropriate advice and that any administration fees are reasonable when consolidation takes place.

Turning to scams, in recent years there has been a significant increase in the number of members of the public being scammed out of their pensions. The FCA and the Pensions Regulator report that in 2018, 180 people reported to Action Fraud that they had been victims, losing on average £82,000 each. A total of nearly £31 million has been reportedly lost to pension scammers since 2017, according to complaints filed with Action Fraud. I therefore welcome the measures in clause 125.

To personalise the scams issue for a moment, a couple of my Newcastle-under-Lyme constituents contacted me about their experience in this area earlier this year. They have had to make very unwelcome changes to their retirement plans as a result. They, together with thousands of others, were convinced by commission-driven sales people to move their money into a scheme called Dolphin Trust, which is now called the German Property Group. The Minister might be aware of the scheme. It was set up to buy derelict listed German buildings in prime locations and redevelop them. In many cases, pension holders who invested were told, by unregulated salesmen who were paid up to 20% commission, that they would almost double their money if they left their savings in the scheme for five years. The scheme was often recommended by independent financial advisers, who advised their clients to invest via a self-invested personal pension.

As the House can imagine, the results were not as advertised. I thank the Treasury for its help with this case so far, but I would welcome further engagement with the Minister when that is possible. My understanding is that this specific case is currently with the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. That is the real human impact of retirement scams on people in my constituency, and I am sure in the constituencies of Members all around the House. I understand that the Government have already taken measures against so-called introducers, but I welcome the measures in clause 125 to strengthen consumer protection. As the Secretary of State put it in her opening speech, we need to have the option of

“prison for pension pot pinchers”.

I want briefly to touch on another couple of the elements of the Bill. I know that postmen and women, in particular, in Newcastle-under-Lyme will welcome the provisions enabling the introduction of collective defined contribution schemes. These have cross-party and industry support, and unions including the Communication Workers Union, as well as Master Trust and other pension providers, have expressed a desire to see more people benefiting from the advantages and risk-sharing that collective defined contribution schemes can bring. I think that that is broadly welcomed across the House. I will also mention the good work being done so that we use our pensions for the good of the planet, and the requirement that the Bill puts on trustees and managers, with a view to securing effective governance over the effects of climate change, and publishing information. That is not being prescriptive; it is about informing and empowering schemes and individuals to make decisions.

In conclusion, I pay tribute to the Minister for his passion for this subject and his willingness to engage with us. I also echo the remarks of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) about the Minister’s personal tragedy earlier this year. The sympathy of the whole House is with him.