Pensions Dashboards (Amendment) Regulations 2023

Debate between Baroness Drake and Baroness Altmann

Wednesday 12th July 2023 Grand Committee

[Baroness Drake (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for so clearly setting out the purpose of the regulations. I enjoyed the reference of the noble Lord, Lord Young, to his previous contribution in the debate on this issue, which was well made. My position is that it is not disappointing that the Government’s enthusiasm for such an early launch has been tempered; I always considered that it would be a very complex project and I am delighted that there is now a much greater focus on the complexities and ensuring what is delivered. I never really wanted it delivered two years ago because I did not think that it would be well delivered then. It needs to be well delivered, because of the scale that it covers.

These regulations replace the pension schemes staging profile, staging deadlines and connection window with a single common deadline for connection of 31 October 2026. I want to reflect on the guidance to schemes on a new connection staging timetable.

The DWP’s description of the purpose of that guidance has varied according to which document is read—there is not an absolute consistency. The documentation ranges between encouraging schemes to meet the new timetable to threats of a breach of the regulations if they do not, and “having regard to” the guidance is a concept that is a little unclear. Can the Minister clarify what exactly is the status of that guidance and when a breach—and a breach of what in regulation terms—would be triggered?

I will move on to an issue that we probably have not debated a great deal in previous discussions of the dashboard. The Explanatory Memorandum refers to the monitoring and review of this legislation, saying that the approach to be adopted is

“to put in place a multi-strand evaluation strategy, the details of which are being explored”.

This strategy will

“ensure the critical success factors can be successfully tested with learning helping to further develop dashboards over time”.

The plans include research into dashboard usage, outcomes from that usage and information provided by providers. However, I cannot see any reference to key pensions public policy outcomes in those critical success factors. I did not see them when the previous regulations came with the Explanatory Memorandum and I cannot see them now.

To take it at its most basic, if, for example, as a result of dashboard usage, greater numbers of people took out more of their pension savings in their 50s or early 60s, is that a success because they have engaged, or undesirable because more people will have a lower income when they get to state retirement age? We have to be very clear what are the public policy aspirations we are seeking from that greater usage. Clearly, it is not set out, as far as I can see, in the critical success factors and the multistranded evaluation strategy—although I recognise that that is work in progress. Will any of those critical success factors identified in the Explanatory Memorandum be benchmarked against desired public policy outcomes over the long term?

Staying with that concept, what long term do we want as the outcome—not only from dashboards but a whole range of other things, although dashboards are before us today? Yesterday we saw eight papers on pensions, including analysis, consultations and consultation responses, all published in one go. I cannot let that moment pass without asking the simple question of the Minister: was any consideration given to how those eight papers and sets of proposals would impact on the multistrand evaluation strategy for the dashboard? I appreciate that the Minister may not be able to answer that today but it is an important question that needs answering.

For me, the decision by the department and the FCA to proceed with a gross investment performance metric in the proposed VFM framework, as announced yesterday, rather than net of all costs and charges, together with the continued dithering by the FCA over the transparency of costs and charges value reporting in decumulation products, is a backward step which does not resonate with the pension savers’ interest and informed decision-making. That was a deeply disappointing element of that VFM framework to read. We know from the FCA’s own findings that a wide range of charges are applied in the decumulation market, which should be rigorously assessed in a joint FCA/DWP/VFM framework. That has just been sidestepped.

Yesterday, the Chancellor referred positively to the Australian supers, but I point out that they have a tough regulatory requirement to report investment returns net of fees. If the Government are going to promote private market investment, where charges are higher, transparency of returns net of fees is essential if the saver is not to end up paying back the excess returns to the industry. The link to the evaluation strategy and the dashboard is: what information will be provided, what influences on behaviour are we expecting and how will that produce better outcomes? I must admit that, when I read that VFM framework, I thought it disappointing and rather contradicted the idea that members using the dashboard will make more informed decisions. I did not want the moment to pass without making that point.

[Baroness Altmann (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend for his clear exposition of the regulations. I am very supportive of them and I think they have general support around the Committee. Indeed, they are pretty essential, as my noble friend described. If we do not pass them, there is a danger that schemes currently required to load data to the dashboard by the end of August will be in breach, and there will be nothing they can do.

Replacing the statutory staging timetable with a single end date of October 2026 is understandable. It is also welcome that the reference date for the dashboard requirements of pension schemes is being moved to 2023-24 so that it can include some of the newer pension schemes, which will then have to go on to the dashboard. However, I would be grateful if my noble friend could help me with a few questions. It is fine if he would like to write to me; I do not expect him necessarily to have all the answers, although he may not be surprised by the questions.

My first question relates to the Government’s intention to publish a new timetable in the form of guidance. When will it be published? Also, my noble friend said that it will not be mandatory, although trustees must, as the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, said, have regard to the guidance and will get at least six months’ notice. What is the penalty for non-compliance with the guidance, if it is not mandatory? If it is struggling, a scheme may simply say, “We’re not going to do it because the amount of money we need to spend to get on the dashboard is not worth our while”. The customers and members of those organisations would then not benefit from the dashboard.

My second question relates to the vital issue of data accuracy, which is essential for dashboards. I hear what my noble friend said about accuracy requirements in the GDPR. Following our briefing meetings, I was grateful to him and his officials for a follow-up letter that clearly explained that the Pensions Regulator has set out in guidance expectations on data quality, record-keeping, measuring data once a year and trustees ensuring that processes and controls are in place so that data standards are of good quality. Master trusts are supposed to have processes for rectifying errors they have identified and then reconciling them. This is all in place and is most welcome, but I have to ask my noble friend: where does responsibility lie for checking the data, ensuring its accuracy and then correcting and reporting back that those data have been assessed and corrected? If that does not happen, on whom would penalties fall? To whom can members and the dashboard turn to ask, “Are you sure these data are correct?” Who is ultimately responsible for signing off on that or carrying responsibility for penalties if that does not happen?

I have another question, in the light of the comments from the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, about the number of releases we have just had from the DWP. I admire the work that has been done by the department—it has clearly been extremely busy—and a lot of it is really useful. However, how will the dashboard dovetail with the reforms proposed for small pots? The Government rightly want to help people—as is part of the intention of the dashboard—to merge pots and not leave small amounts of money in legacy schemes. What are the plans for integrating the dashboard rollout with the small pots reforms?

Pension Schemes Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Drake and Baroness Altmann

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard) & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 30th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Drake [V]]

My Lords, Amendment 52 is in my name and those of my noble friend Lady Sherlock and the noble Baroness, Lady Janke. The Bill enables the introduction of an ecosystem of public and commercial pensions dashboards. When built, the dashboard service will find and display, for view by all individuals, all the information about their occupation, personal and state pensions in one place. The Secretary of State can mandate all pension providers and schemes, including the state, to release their data on an individual. That mandate will cover the financial data of many millions of people.

The intention is that the dashboard will contribute to better decision-making by individuals about their long-term savings. Unfortunately, the evidence shows that that will not automatically translate into engagement and good decision-making by everyone. Structures will need to exist around the dashboard which support people making choices and protect them from detriment. That is why Amendment 52 is important. The amendment ensures that a dashboard service should not go beyond the finding and displaying for view information on a consumer’s savings into allowing financial transactions to take place through the dashboard before Parliament has had the opportunity to consider the matter and approve this through primary legislation.

The long-term savings market is particularly vulnerable to consumer detriment, because of the asymmetry of knowledge and understanding between the consumer and the provider, consumer behavioural biases, the complexity of products, and the irreversible nature of many pension decisions. There is a plethora of reports from different regulators confirming this. Allowing transactions on commercial dashboards, such as the transfer of assets, could provide new opportunities for detriment. The impact of scams, mis-selling, provider nudging and poor decision-making could increase if an individual’s total savings are displayed in one place, the dashboard allows financial transactions, and the wrap of consumer protection is not fit for purpose. For some vulnerable customers, poor decisions could be more costly if the impact is across all their savings, and if people are scammed, they could be scammed out of everything.

Before transactions are authorised, Parliament needs to understand how the dashboard is driving behaviours, of both consumer and provider, and how consumers will be protected. In this market, the consumer demand side is weak, and, increasingly, regulatory focus is on provider supply-side controls to protect consumers’ interests. Commercial dashboards could make it much easier for firms that have attractive front-end offerings to capture consumer assets through, for example, encouraging early consolidation and the transfer of pension pots. It is to be remembered that pension transaction decisions are mostly irreversible, and poor decisions can be financially life-changing in their impact.

Dashboards are not a silver bullet for removing consumer risk. Most individuals do not proactively engage with their pensions until they have to. When they do, they can be price insensitive and vulnerable to nudging, inertia and judgments detrimental to their retirement income. We now see that vulnerability in the drawdown market following the introduction of pension freedoms, as the FCA has confirmed.

Consumers reveal powerful behavioural biases which have more impact on financial capability than lack of knowledge and information. They take what the FCA describes as the “path of least resistance”, even in the face of information available to them. If someone is looking to consolidate all their savings, rather like Alice and the Drink Me bottle, if there is a button on the provider’s commercial dashboard that is marked “Transfer All Savings”, they are more likely to press it.

The FCA rules have not prevented mis-selling. Regulated advice failed the Port Talbot steel workers. The FCA report on the financial advice market’s support to pensions does not make good reading. In a dashboard service which allows financial transactions, protecting individuals’ data, and who can hold, access and use it, are questions of major importance. This amendment does not argue against allowing financial transactions longer term over the dashboard, but it recognises that the consumer protection issues are of such importance and magnitude that the decision to allow transactions must be preceded by the approval of Parliament. Neither Government nor Parliament can be agnostic on the matter. The state supports the long-term saving system with more than £40 billion of tax relief and mandates employers to enrol millions of workers into a pension scheme.

The Government must ensure that the dashboard service makes a positive contribution to retirement income outcomes for the consumer and the public good of the UK. I am arguing that people should have the freedom to make good decisions and be protected from poor decisions that they cannot reverse. This is something that the FCA often tries to do, and I am sure that if one put the issue to some of those Port Talbot steel workers, they would agree. Some of those steel workers learned a cruel lesson: poor pension savings decisions are irreversible. In Committee on 2 March, the noble Earl, Lord Howe, commented:

“I do not believe that I expressed a categorical Government intention to include transactions on the dashboard. I said that we would make that incremental step only after the most careful consideration and public consultation, and assessment of all the risks. I freely acknowledge that risks exist in that quarter.”—[Official Report, 2/3/20; col. 209GC.]


My case, and the sheer weight of the evidence, is that such are the potential risks that Parliament itself should have its say and that scrutiny by secondary legislation in the affirmative is not sufficient. Furthermore, the very nature and extent of the protections required may, because of their nature, require primary legislation. This is not an area of settled policy and it is a matter of significance for many millions of citizens. I hope that the Minister will accept the amendment. If he does not, I intend to push it to a vote. I beg to move.

[Baroness Altmann [V]]

My Lords, I have little to add to the wise words of the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, on Amendment 52. There are significant dangers should there be an easy transaction button on a pensions dashboard right from day one. However, perhaps I may speak briefly to my own amendments, which have been kindly supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles: Amendments 56 and 59.

Amendment 56 is probing in nature and seeks to amend Section 119 of the Pensions Act 2004 to provide that regulations may be imposed that would require information from occupational pension schemes to dashboards to be accurate and up to date. Further, the amendment would ask the regulator to impose requirements for regular data audits, accuracy checks and error correction reports.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Altmann [V]]

My Lords, I support Amendment 71, to which I have added my name. I have little to add to the excellent words of the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, and my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham.

I stress to my noble friend the Minister that this is a really important amendment. The Government’s recent White Paper called for pension scheme funding which enables the best deal for members, supports the economy and does not place extra burdens on business. If those are the objectives—and I think they are the right ones—they will be at odds with the draft DB funding code that may emerge from this legislation, which seems to want to drive DB schemes on a path to so-called de-risking, aiming for a particular date of maturity. This concept is simply inappropriate for an open scheme.

The regulatory approach for schemes such as USS or the Railways Pension Scheme would see their ability to invest for the long term, which must be in the members’ best interest, become much more difficult. There does not seem to be sufficient recognition of the difference in liquidity profile and investment horizon of an open, relatively immature scheme compared to a closed scheme. Indeed, this would pose an existential threat to the survival of all remaining 1,000 or so open schemes. In the face of quantitative easing, increasing exposure to gilts and fixed income assets makes little sense while central bank policy is designed to force bond yields lower. Forcing schemes to compete with central banks to buy ever more expensive bonds is the most expensive way to fund these pension commitments.

The Bank of England’s pension scheme is an ideal example. It follows a lowest-risk approach, investing solely in gilts and other such supposedly safe assets. It does not match its liabilities, but it is open and entails a contribution rate of between 40% and 50% of pensionable salary. Should such pension contributions be required without any upside potential for a diversified investment strategy that can take advantage of the wide range of investment options available from infrastructure assets, building housing for rental and other areas where pension schemes with a long-term horizon are ideally placed to take advantage—for example, our own infrastructure, in which other countries’ pension schemes have significantly invested—schemes such as RPMI would require such significant contribution increases that members could not afford it and would opt out, and employers could probably not afford it either.

Therefore, I urge my noble friend to look carefully at this really important issue and to recognise explicitly that there are different needs for open DB schemes relative to those that are otherwise closed.

[Baroness Drake [V]]

My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 71. Given the hour, the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles of Berkhamsted, with her usual skill, has captured the issues clearly and succinctly. It is clear that there is genuine concern among those running DB schemes which are materially open to new members with strong employers, such as the sections of the Railways Pension Scheme and the Universities Superannuation Scheme. They fear that they will be forced to de-risk unnecessarily, with all the implications that that carries and all the potential detriment for both employers and employees in the scheme.

The amendment seeks to address two issues: first, that it should not be government policy to require trustees of pension schemes materially open to new entrants with strong employer covenants to adopt a strategy that will result in them de-risking their investments unnecessarily and prematurely, for all the reasons that other noble Lords have clearly articulated; and, secondly, that the Secretary of State, in exercising powers under Schedule 10 to make provisions through regulation on the funding of defined benefit schemes, should make provisions that are consistent with the policy in the White Paper statement that running on with employer support could be an acceptable long-term strategy for a materially open scheme. The amendment is consistent with any reading of the government policy in the White Paper, but it seeks to ensure that it happens.