Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Miller Excerpts

Monday 18th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

I thank my hon. Friend for being the only Member who managed to get a pensions question on today’s Order Paper. [Interruption.] I will make the most of it. He is quite right that the Office of Fair Trading identified 18 different sorts of charges, which are often baffling and hidden. One of its recommendations was that the committees that oversee pensions should be given transparent information about charges, and that is a recommendation we will be looking to take forward.

[Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

Over the last generation the net size of employment units has shrunk as a function of technology and changes in society. That has meant smaller pension schemes that in net terms require a greater management effort to run them. What will the Minister do to try to bring together some of the smaller schemes to get better value for money overall?

[Steve Webb]

The hon. Gentleman raises an important point. In fact, consolidation is happening; the number of medium-sized schemes has declined quite significantly in the past few years. The quality standards that we will be putting in place will mean that running a small, substandard, sub-scale scheme will not be an option, so we anticipate that there will be much more consolidation. Together with the National Employment Savings Trust, the Government’s own scheme which already has over 500,000 members, we are moving towards better value for money.