Financial Guidance and Claims Bill [HL]

Baroness Altmann Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 6th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sharkey]

My Lords, Amendment 42B is in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, for whose support I am extremely grateful. I will speak also to Amendment 42C. Amendment 42B is very simple. It provides that, before accessing pension pots, people must have received the appropriate information and guidance either from the SFGB or from a regulated adviser. I touched on the need for this in my earlier remarks on Amendment 27A, and I am sure that I do not need to remind the Committee that take-up of advice on pensions is very low and that financial capability and understanding are also at very low levels. Conversely, financial misunderstanding is at very high levels. This augurs badly for sensible pension decisions.

The FCA’s July interim report on retirement outcomes shows that accessing pension pots early has become the new norm under pension freedoms, as the noble Lord, Lord Young, noted a moment ago, with 72% of pensions accessed by people aged under 65. Most of these people withdrew lump sums. Half withdrew the full value of their pension. The FCA says that it found no evidence of people squandering their pension savings, but expressed concern about why people are shifting their savings out of pensions. Over half of the fully withdrawn pensions were not spent but were transferred into other savings or investments. This suggests, according to the FCA, a mistrust of pensions, and raises the possibility or even probability of new risks, such as paying too much tax and missing out on investment growth and higher retirement income. The FCA also found that most consumers chose the path of least resistance; they usually accepted the draw-down option offered by their existing pension provider without shopping around or even using the information provided by their own pension provider. That is perhaps entirely unsurprising, given the very low levels of take-up of advice and the high levels of ignorance and misunderstanding. It may be unsurprising, but it is also worrying.

The FCA’s Retirement Outcomes Review is the fifth such investigation into the UK’s retirement market. All five investigations have found much the same thing: they have consistently identified DC pension customers’ poor awareness of their options and the distrust, disinclination or inertia that can so easily lead to poor decisions. It is not just poor decisions that are a concern but scams and frauds as well. Without taking proper advice, vulnerability to scams and frauds increases. The FT reported earlier this year that losses from pension scams in March this year alone had risen to a record high of £8 million. Victims of what they described as “liberation fraud” were typically conned into placing their pension funds into investments that do not exist or are illiquid or incapable of delivering the promised returns. Victims are not usually warned about tax charges in liberating their pension funds before the age of 55, which can wipe out half the value of their savings. Being better informed and advised will not, of course, prevent all poor decisions or prevent all scams and frauds, but it is a powerful safeguard against these things. It is not the same as just having information advice out there somewhere; it means accessing and using this information and advice, which is what our Amendment 42B would do. It requires people, before they can access their pension pots, to have received information and guidance either through the SFGB or regulated advisers—the same kind of controls that currently apply to taking out a mortgage. The amendment would make that work for many more people.

I turn briefly to deal with Amendment 42C, which would simply require the SFGB to report annually on the levels of usage of pensions guidance and regulated financial advice by those accessing their pension pots. As I explained earlier, the quality of guides is very high but the take-up is very low. We need to know how well the SFGB is doing in fixing this problem and have the SFGB publish the data. We need to see how successful it is, for example, in raising the level of take-up from the current extremely low 7%. That is a vital way in which to hold the new body to account and what the amendment does—although, having thought about it a little more, I accept that the SFGB may not be the best-placed organisation to do that. The Minister, from whom I gratefully take correction, is nodding as I say that. But I hope that the Minister will give careful and sympathetic consideration to Amendment 42B in particular. I beg to move.

[Baroness Altmann]

My Lords, I support the amendment, to which I have added my name. It would make the take-up of guidance the default option or a mandatory option for anyone who does not have independent, regulated financial advice. We are taking time and spending so much effort setting up a body that is designed to help to guide and inform the public; this amendment would help to ensure that the public actually get the benefit of it.

Clause 5(1) gives the Secretary of State powers to issue,

“directions to the single financial guidance body”,

to do this. Therefore, before anyone could transfer or access their pension savings, they would have received this guidance, which will be set up specifically to make sure they understand the risks before they make any decisions about their pension. Someone would also explain the tax consequences and the potential long-term dangers of giving up a pension because, once they have given it up, they cannot get it back. As the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, just remarked, the recent FCA research shows that there are some people who are transferring money out of their pension and just putting it into a cash account or a different investment because, clearly, they do not understand the benefits of keeping it in a pension. Having somebody explaining it to them first would be very much the aim of this particular body.

I wholly support the pension freedoms that the Government have introduced, but they are introducing them into a landscape where, for the past few decades, people were encouraged to believe that they did not really need to understand or engage with pensions, because all the decisions were taken for them. For most people, they were in a default fund on their savings journey and then, when they took the money later on, they were put into an annuity and that was it. They did not really need to understand what any options were because they did not really have many options. Unfortunately, people did not understand how annuities worked either. If we make this guidance a default or mandatory option then we make sure that we are protecting the public as well as giving them the freedoms. It is right that we give them the opportunity to make decisions that will suit them, but we have to make sure that we give them the opportunity of making properly informed decisions and as fair a chance as possible of making the freedoms work for them.

Providers too often want people to make a decision when they are too young, for example. It is not just in the freedoms landscape that people are taking their pensions early; the majority of people were buying annuities well before the age of 65 under the previous system, too. I hope that the Government will seriously consider that the 7% take-up rate for Pension Wise is woefully low—we need to find a way to increase that and we need to make sure that we protect the public and give them the fairest chance of making the freedoms work. Pension Wise or the new body could, for example, issue vouchers for everybody who is coming to the stage at which they might need to make a decision about their pension. They could be sent a voucher for a free guidance session. The financial guidance body, perhaps with the FCA and with providers, can work on ways of boosting take-up, but it is definitely something that would make the work that we are doing in this Committee so much more valuable around the country. I support this amendment.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, we support this amendment. We think that it is a good, strong, robust amendment. It takes us back to the introduction of pension freedoms which, I am afraid, were done rather precipitately and without the groundwork being properly laid. This was a point that my noble friend made at the time but it fell on stony ground.

I was going to ask what the take-up of regulated advice or guidance was at the moment but the noble Baroness has given us the 7% figure for Pension Wise. If one is heading for a much higher percentage, it raises the question of what the resource implications of that would be. I do not know if any groundwork has been done—it is not a reason for not doing it. These are important situations. My noble friend has prompted me about the idea of an MoT at the age of 50 as part of the process to get people to focus on their upcoming pensions. We are certainly happy to support this. I am interested to hear what the Minister has to say on what the problems with it might be. Whatever they are, I would hope that we could overcome them, because this could make a very significant difference to the pensions landscape.

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Moved by

[Baroness Altmann]

42D: Clause 3, page 3, line 25, at end insert—
“( ) As part of its pensions guidance function, the single financial guidance body must provide information and guidance regarding unsolicited communications and make provision to ensure that members of the public receive this information and guidance before taking any action following an unsolicited communication, such as transferring an occupational or personal pension to an unregulated scheme.”

[Baroness Altmann]

My Lords, I will also speak to Amendment 42E. Effectively, these amendments would ensure that anyone who received an unsolicited approach about their pension would have to go to Pension Wise before they were permitted to do anything or receive the guidance if they did not have an independent financial adviser.

I admit that this amendment is the result of the fact that we were unable to find a way to ban the cold calling that leads to the scams that we are trying to deal with here in the Bill. I also thank the Minister for the recent statement from the department that it has decided that it will ban cold calling for pensions. However, I hope your Lordships will agree that this seems like an ideal legislative vehicle in which to carry out the Government’s wish to ban cold calling and to protect the public effectively. Banning cold calling effectively protects members of the public from scams. Scams that result in people losing much or all of their pension are almost always the result of an unsolicited approach. So this is a roundabout way of trying to achieve something which is clearly in the public interest and which the Government themselves would like to do.

We could require people who had an unsolicited approach either to have a financial adviser to ensure that what they were doing was right or to have a conversation with our guidance service to assess what they were about to do. Presumably, the first question from whoever was speaking to them from the guidance service would be, “Is this the result of an unsolicited approach—a cold call or an email from someone you did not know, or a text or whatever?”. At that point, it would be possible to protect the person before they could sign away their pension in a scam. There is a classic trick of rushing people into parting with their money or signing on the dotted line by saying that it is a limited offer which is available only today or is about to run out. That would not be able to happen if somebody had had to make an appointment with Pension Wise or the guidance body and had discussed it first.

I hope that we can discuss this issue. If this is not the best way of achieving the aim, I hope that the Government will consider introducing into this Bill another method of achieving it so that we can start the ball rolling on protecting the public and getting rid of cold calls. We have done that for mortgages. I know that the Minister has said that it is a complex matter, but I would be very grateful if she could explain the complexity which means that we should pass up this opportunity to do something that the Government themselves want to do when no other legislative vehicle in which to do so is in sight for the next couple of years. I beg to move.

[The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)]

My Lords, I had not intended to say very much but, after discussing this issue with the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, earlier, I thought that I should say a few words now. As I said at Second Reading, my interest is very much in Part 2 of the Bill—an area that is home territory for me and on which I have something to say. My drafting eye was caught by Amendment 42E. I feel that having a decent definition of “unsolicited communication” would be very valuable in legislative terms as we go through this process. It applies not just in this area, which has been very eloquently explained by the noble Baroness; it applies also in Part 2 and elsewhere. Therefore, I feel that it is worth debating it now.

As I see the definition, even simple things such as a letter or some sort of Facebook communication would not fall within it, so I simply say that it is worth having a good definition so that we know what a cold call is. It is not just a telephone call. I receive an awful lot of Part 2-type telephone calls at home, admittedly in Scotland, every single lunchtime, but there are other methods of cold calling. Certainly I have been shown very worrying letters by local vulnerable people in Scotland suggesting that they do something urgently about their pensions and so on.

Therefore, I think that we need that definition, and I strongly support the thinking behind these two amendments. I would be very happy to join a meeting to talk about how one might tweak definitions and whether a definition is needed here or elsewhere in the Bill, but I think that it would be very helpful to have a clear idea of what a cold call is.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords, has the definition of cold calling been sought from the trading standards group of scambassadors who have been looking at all types of scams? It would be incredibly helpful to have that definition. I also wonder whether this amendment is too narrow as written. However, I congratulate the noble Baroness on using this opportunity to do something that desperately needs to be done. The amount of scamming is a scandal.

[Baroness Altmann]

My Lords, I refer to my Amendment 73, which attempts to define cold calling using many more words. That was in the context of banning cold calls for claims management companies. I do not claim that this is the correct version for cold calling.

[Lord Sharkey]

My Lords, I was pleased to add my name to the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann. Both amendments address the problem of cold calling and pensions. I would, like the noble Baroness, have preferred an outright ban on cold calling, just as I would like an outright ban on cold calling for the benefit of debt management companies and for claims management companies. We can deal with banning cold calling for claims management companies later in the Bill, as the noble Baroness just pointed out, and she and I have both tabled amendments to do exactly that. Regrettably, banning for pensions and debt management companies is outside the scope of the Bill.

The amendments before us, therefore, cannot and do not go that far, but they do offer a pretty good work-around. They would do two things, as the noble Baroness has explained. They would require the SFGB to provide information and guidance on cold calling. They would also require people to have received this information and guidance before taking any action following a cold call.

Noble Lords have discussed cold calling on many occasions in this Chamber. On every occasion there has been universal dissatisfaction with the process and universal recognition that it is a menace, yet it still goes on. There has been a 180% increase in the past 10 months alone. There are now 2.6 million calls every month. This is an omnipresent menace. But there is no cold calling for mortgages. We banned that. Successive Governments have never got around to banning cold calling for pensions, for debt management or claims management and I know that the Government have promised, yet again, to ban cold calling for pensions. But, yet again, it is a promise without a delivery date. It is a promise that has no obvious legislative vehicle except this one.

I still do not understand why the Government are dragging their heels over this or over debt management and claims management cold calling either. I acknowledge that there will be complexities in devising the details of any ban, but it is surely not beyond the ability of the Government to deal with it speedily if they assign the right priority and the right resources to it. In any case, I remind the Minister that we have already held out in these debates the possibility of an enabling clause in the Bill with the details to follow later in secondary legislation. We have had no response to that—all rather disappointing and mystifying. In the absence of any willingness on the part of the Government to actually do anything in the Bill, these amendments show how progress can be made. I very much hope that the Minister will respond positively.

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[Baroness Altmann]

I thank my noble friend for her answer and for her passion at the beginning of her response. She clearly understands the concerns that have been expressed right across the House. Perhaps we in this House can help to accelerate the process by which we could achieve what she is struggling at the moment to achieve. Let me first respond to the question of the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, and try to explain that these amendments are actually linked to Amendment 42B. If you have mandatory guidance that has to be taken before anybody can make a decision to access or transfer their pension, then Amendments 42D and 42E allow that to apply to a cold call.

As the noble Lord rightly pointed out, Pension Wise, or the financial guidance body itself, would not know in advance who had had a cold call and therefore needed to come, but if guidance were mandatory the guidance body would have a duty, as specified in this amendment, to ensure that anyone who had a cold call received advice or came for guidance before they were permitted to transfer the money. The problem with the scams comes when people transfer money from their existing pension elsewhere. So, as I say, the mandatory default guidance in Amendment 42B links in to Amendments 42D and 42E to try to capture the public protection that we wish to achieve.

It is, however, important to specify that this body must inform the public and provide adequate information about the risks of unsolicited approaches about pensions and about guidance and so on, because the body might think, “Well, if there is another organisation dealing with scams—we have Project Scorpion and Project Bloom, different initiatives going on around government—we do not need to be so cautious about informing the public”. This is the place where we want to make sure that the public is informed about pensions. Having said that, it seems that if we can get the ban on cold calling into the Bill at this very time, perhaps by changing the title of the Bill, or in some other way, with support across the House, working together to find a way that would be acceptable, we would all, including my noble friend, be much more comfortable with the protection we are offering the public. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 42D withdrawn.