Pensions Bill

Baroness Hollis of Heigham Excerpts

Monday 16th December 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Flight (Con)]

My Lords, I have encountered more upset in relation to this aspect of the Bill than what I would hope was support for having a state pension above the level of income support. Quite simply, we are talking about individuals who have paid their national insurance, who are too old to benefit from the 2016 changes, whose pensions are less than that, and who feel somewhat aggrieved that many people who have not paid their national insurance will qualify for the increased pension after 2016 when they will not. I appreciate that it is all about money, but I wonder whether a full calculation has been done of the net real costs of putting everyone who is entitled to a pension on to the new arrangement in 2016; I suppose that is unless they have qualifications that exceed that. However, I can only think that there would be a significant net-off in terms of other welfare payments if people’s pensions were slightly larger. This is a fundamentally good piece of legislation on which there is relatively cross-party support. However, I slightly warn the Government that this issue—that those who are too old to benefit from the 2016 reforms will often be worse off than those young enough to benefit—is rather spoiling the welcome to these changes.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham (Lab)]

My Lords, I would like to ask a simple question that relates to one of the hopes that some of us had a year or so back. The greatest proportion of those claiming pension credit tend to be elderly widows—when the husband died, the pension died with him—over the age of 80 or 85. I fully understand that to bring all pensions on to this would be a big-ticket item for any Government to contemplate; that is not in doubt, as the previous speaker mentioned. However, what if we were to introduce the pension not just for people reaching pension age in 2016 but for those over 85, and then for the next decade bring the 85s down by a year, with the 65s going up a year, as they will? They would meet in about a decade for men, perhaps slightly later for women. In about a decade or so, virtually all pensions would be covered on an incremental basis. I have not been able to cost that. I was told, teasingly by the Minister in the other place, that he thought it would probably cost half a billion pounds, but whether that was per year or in total was not made clear to me. Have there been any thoughts about how we might progressively increase the coverage?

[Lord Stoneham of Droxford (LD)]

I would like to make three points. I hope that there will be cross-party support but, if we are now saying that the higher pension should apply to everybody, clearly we need to know the cost. I have to ask the question: why did Labour not do this in its 13 years if it does not cost money? The point has to be made. Resentment could build up among those who see younger people coming forward on larger pensions. We know that there is a problem with women in the 1951 to 1953 age group. We have to understand exactly how much this is going to cost. The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, is absolutely right: it is not necessary for this legislation, but in the future obviously we should look—as the country can afford it—at how we can phase in for various groups of pensioners the higher rate and get rid of means-testing for them. We need to know about the money but we also have to be realistic. You have to start somewhere on this higher-rate pension, and where the Government have tried in difficult circumstances to start is the best that can be done at the moment, I think. Obviously we should look at the future at some stage, once we are aware of the cost and how we can afford it.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud) (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Turner and Lady Greengross, for their amendments, which cut to the heart of the rationale for these reforms and provide an opportunity to discuss how this Government are committed to a decent and secure income for all pensioners.

Clause 1 is a landmark in the history of British state pensions. It creates a single state pension in place of the current two-tier system. It marks a return to the simplicity that Beveridge had in mind in 1942 and a withdrawal of the state from earnings-related pension provision. The fact is that we now need a new pension system to meet the needs of today’s working-age population. We estimate that 13 million people are not saving enough for retirement.

The single tier will provide a flat-rate pension above the level of the basic means test to most people in the future. This goes hand in hand with automatic enrolment and will help to give those saving today for their retirement far more clarity about what they can expect from the state. The reforms will also help to dispel any perception that people’s own savings could be offset by a corresponding loss of means-tested benefit.

The key point here is that the reforms are about restructuring spending to support saving. They are not about spending more or less on future pensioners, and they have been designed to stay within the amount that we were projected to have spent if we had rolled the current system forward. In designing the transition, we have been able to right some historic wrongs, as the Minister for Pensions has often said.

I turn to the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, about what she calls the cliff-edge effect. Around three-quarters of pensioners retiring in the five first cohorts will see a change of less than £5 a week compared with if we rolled the current system forward.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

Is that medium or median?

[Lord Freud]

I think that in practice it will be a mean average. However, I will make that absolutely clear.

By withdrawing the facility to build a pension above the flat rate and modernising the system, removing elements such as savings credit and derived entitlement that no longer reflect the needs of the working-age population, we are able to fund the single-tier pension and improve the outcomes of groups such as the self-employed, carers and low earners, who have historically seen lower state pensions. It follows, therefore, that there are two means by which we could apply the new state pension to existing pensioners.

First, we could simply increase the pension of all existing pensioners to the full single-tier rate, if they are currently receiving less. In response to the question asked by my noble friend Lord Flight, we estimate that this would cost around £10 billion.

[Lord Freud]

It would be £10 billion per annum.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

I think that by the time we have a rolling cohort, by definition that cannot be the case. I realise that we are pressing the Minister for information while he is on his feet. It would be very helpful if, perhaps towards the end, he could pick up points on which we have asked questions.

[Lord Freud]

I will confirm the precise parameters around that £10 billion figure to the Committee as soon as I have that information.

On the question raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, on rolling together from an 85 base, we do not have those particular costs, as she might imagine. However, we can look at the numbers, although it will be a very complex exercise, not least because some will have a current pension in excess of the £144 base we are using on an illustrative basis.

If we were to take those extra costs they would fall to today’s workers; the risk would be that that would undermine the trust between the generations, which is at the heart of our pay-as-you-go national insurance system.

The alternative would be to assess the single-tier entitlement of this group and pay this amount. If we did this, and fully brought forward the single-tier rules for existing pensioners, this would entail removing some pension already in payment, such as derived entitlement and the savings credit. I suspect that we would all agree that this would be totally unacceptable.

However, this Government are equally clear that it would be unacceptable for today's poorer pensioners to get left behind, and have taken many steps to ensure this is not the case. We have restored the earnings link to the basic state pension. The coalition’s introduction of triple-lock uprating on top means that the level of the basic state pension is now at its highest proportion of average earnings in more than 20 years.

To ensure that the poorest pensioners benefit from the triple lock, this year the pension credit standard minimum guarantee was increased by the same cash amount as the basic state pension, and that will happen next year. These measures have been particularly key in the unusually uncertain economic climate we have seen in recent years. In a time of austere spending decisions, we have protected key benefits for older people, including winter fuel payments.

The noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, is right to highlight the importance of effective monitoring of pensioner poverty and the effects of these reforms on retirement incomes; indeed, her sterling work as the co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Ageing and Older People has continued to champion this cause. The latest figures, for 2011-12, show that the rate of relative poverty among pensioners is close to the lowest ever recorded. It is at 14%. I recall with slight irony that when we debated the Child Poverty Bill in 2009, the expression “eradication” was used about bringing the poverty figure for children down there to 10%. The DWP publishes annually the households below average income report, a national statistic which provides a full analysis of the levels of relative and absolute poverty for pensioners, and pensioner material deprivation. In addition, in order to look at the impact of the Government’s pension reforms as a whole, the Government published a framework for the analysis of future pension incomes in September 2013, which provides an overview of projected future retirement incomes.

I will pick up the question from my noble friend Lord Kirkwood, who asked for reassurance on the delivery plans for the single-tier state pension. As noble Lords are all aware, it will be introduced from 6 April 2016. The single-tier programme was set up in early 2012 to undertake early feasibility work and test deliverability of the policy as it was being developed. It is a DWP programme, with changes being delivered by the DWP and HMRC.

We are confident of delivering by April 2016 for several reasons. First, there is broad consensus on the main principles of the reform, which provides a helpful basis to plan for implementation. The main development of systems will commence once the Bill gets Royal Assent, at which point the key legislation will be settled. This will ease the challenge of developing systems while policy is likely to change.

Secondly, the key change needed to deliver single tier is to reform the way we calculate state pension, based on an individual’s national insurance contributions. We have long-standing experience of using national insurance contribution records held on HMRC systems to calculate pensions. Single tier is just a variant of that process. We will, however, aim to use this opportunity to make improvements to the way that we deliver our services.

Thirdly, both departments have the capacity to deliver the programme, have a good recent track record of making major changes to pensions calculations to tight timescales and have successfully delivered previous pension reform changes. The programme will use a process of phased development of systems and processes to minimise any risks to delivery of single tier. Both the DWP and HMRC will use existing staff who have expertise in dealing with NICs and pensions to deliver these reforms. HMRC also has experience of managing the end of contracting out for defined contribution schemes in 2012. This will stand it in good stead for introducing the changes for defined benefit schemes.

Finally, we will engage users and interested parties in a very practical way, helping us to test each stage of developments to make sure that they work to provide an accessible and easy-to-use service. The new systems will be tested in advance of April 2016, through the advance claims process. Additionally, we are building in contingency to ensure that the existing telephony channel can be used, just in case the digital solution does not work on day one.

A clear governance structure exists to manage the implementation. A DWP programme board, on which HMRC sits, is in place to oversee delivery of single-tier pension and delivery teams have been set up in both departments. Both departments believe that delivery of the single-tier reform is challenging but doable. The main change needed to deliver single tier is to reform the way we calculate state pension and that remains the focus of the programme. We do, however, need to take this opportunity to move to a more efficient and customer-focused business delivery that meets the government commitment to deliver more services digitally. To achieve this, the programme team is working closely with the Cabinet Office. The department is also building its capability in developing digital services through the appointment of a director-general with introduction of single tier as a digital service as his primary responsibility.

To conclude, I agree that reducing pensioner poverty is crucial. The steps already taken by this Government will help to do so and the measures in the Bill will provide for a more secure future for generations to come. I therefore ask the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, to withdraw her amendment.

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[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I am happy so to confirm. As I say, for existing pensioners we have no plans to make any changes to the way that pension credit works. I have got a little bit more information. The cost of £10 billion is to get everyone on to single tier, and that is the cost to get all current pensioners to the illustrative £144 per week. I can confirm that cost is £10 billion per annum. This is a figure taken at 2016 and clearly that would reduce over time. The other issue that we discussed as we went through this was the 75% of people who see a change of less than £5 a week: this is not an average and most people will see only a small change compared to the current system.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

I will first follow up on my noble friend’s point on savings credit. The Minister says that it will remain unchanged, but given that it is going to be CPI uprated, where the guaranteed pension credit is earnings related, at what point does the Minister expect savings credit to no longer exist because the guarantee has caught up with it? Therefore, although it is technically true that there will be no changes none the less it is surely also true that, X period of time on, given assumptions about inflation and so on, savings credit will in practice no longer exist.

[Baroness Sherlock]

I thank my noble friend. I think that when the Minister comes to read Hansard, he may notice that I asked him to confirm that its value would not change and I am sure that he meant to clarify the level rather than the value. One of the reasons is that, since they came to power, the Government have frozen the maximum level at which savings credit can be obtained. I wonder whether they intend to carry that on, in which case would we find that its value did, in fact, diminish.

[Lord Flight]

I am sorry to bother the Minister but is the £10 billion figure what I call gross or net? The key issue is that many older pensioners who would not otherwise qualify will qualify for various forms of income support in whatever is left of pension tax credits, and there really is a need to net all those projected costs off if they are not covered in the £10 billion to see what the actual net extra cost is. If, in that exercise, the Government discovered that the cost was much less than that, then I think this is something that could be thought about.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

In particular, my Lords, given that the Government are proposing to remove AIPs for those over 75, there is therefore going to be an annual means-testing of pensioners who, if they were 10 or 12 years younger, would have that £144 as of right.

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I shall respond where I can. I think that I shall have to write on the future of the savings credit as a result of an earnings increase of guaranteed credit, as it is quite complicated. At this stage, I shall also have to write to confirm exactly where we are on the question of whether the figure is gross or net. In practice, I think that I will end up writing quite often on these figures because they are quite complicated and one wants to double-check them carefully. Offering responses on the hoof may be a little dangerous and I shall be reduced to writing more often than would be the case with some of the other things that we discuss. With those issues raised and with a process to deal with them, I again ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

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Moved by

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

3: Clause 1, page 1, line 8, at end insert—
“( ) Notwithstanding subsection (2), regulations may provide that any woman born between 6 April 1951 and 5 April 1953 and ordinarily resident in the United Kingdom shall be eligible to receive benefits under this Part.”

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, to try to pre-empt any teasing I shall apologise for putting my notes on a stand, but the alternative is to have them in very large font.

I support the equalisation of the pension age, although I think it has been too compressed. However, one cohort of women feel that they have been unjustly treated. I want, in particular, to raise the issue of those women born between April 1951 and April 1953. Women older than them will have retired at a younger age and enjoy their pension for longer. Women younger than them will qualify for the new higher pension. They are caught in the middle. They have experienced up to three years’ delay in receiving their own BSP from the age of 60, only to find that men born in the same year as them will, unlike them, get the new state pension.

Men are sailing smoothly towards the new pension, and for them nothing has changed. Women have faced mounting instability as their pension age is deferred. They have waited longer but got nothing for it, and they cannot afford to defer which, if taken as a pension increment, might bring them to the new state pension level. This is essentially the problem of government introducing a new and very welcome state pension, while being still in the process of equalising the state pension age. I recognise the difficulties that inevitably come with that.

I suspect that the Minister will say that given that women are drawing the old pension for two extra years, and that given women’s greater longevity, they will on average—and I bet it will be another mean average, not a median—be better off than men. There will be a sort of bell curve; they will be better off at the beginning, then not better off, and if they live that long, there will be a crossover point where women who live longer—it could be at 81 or 82—finally draw ahead in this lottery.

Averages, as the Minister knows very well, are deceptive. A working-class woman is likely to live less long than most of your Lordships—male Lordships—in the House at the moment, and therefore those figures will not apply. We will return to that debate obviously at much greater length when debating life-expectancy increases. Therefore any particular women may well be worse off.

However, it was noticeable that the Minister in the other place, while using those arguments in the debate on this issue in the first amendment there, did not draw the Committee’s attention at any point to the pension credit rules. Those rules are very interesting, very relevant, and, I think pretty devastating of the Government’s case. Is it not funny that they were not mentioned?

At the moment, many poorer men who have dropped out of the labour market between 60 and 65 are able to draw full pension credit on equal terms, ages and rates with women who are getting the BSP plus pension credit. In the same way—and this is, of course, part of the European directive on equality—men could get a winter fuel payment or a bus pass at the same age as women, which was at women’s BSP age, from 60 on, not at their own retirement age. The same rule applies to pension credit.

Therefore, when women’s BSP age was 60, men could draw pension credit to top up their IS for five years before becoming eligible for their own BSP at 65. When women’s BSP age rose to 62, men could draw pension credit from 62 until their retirement age—there are no cliff edges for them. They are now effectively getting an income the same as the BSP and the same as women at age 63.

Currently 167,000 men between 60 and 65 draw pension credit. That tops up their income support of nearly £70 to the standard pension credit figure of nearly £140. It doubles it. Incidentally, a higher number of men between the ages of 60 and 65 draw pension credit than the number of men between 75 and 79. To put it another way, just under a fifth of all men who draw pension credit—although some, of course, may be in couples—draw it before their state pension age. That is great for them. However, unlike women, when they reach 65, after 5 April 2016, they move smoothly on to the new and more generous state pension. We did not hear a word of this down the other end but, in other words, men have had a double protection: pension credit on women’s terms, followed by the new state pension on men’s terms. Not only were they not disadvantaged by being male, they were actively protected and, to that degree, favoured.

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[Lord Freud]

I will have to write with that estimate. There is every way of doing these estimates that one can imagine. That brings me to the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, and the noble Lord, Lord Browne, which is to review how many women in this cohort are projected to derive a pension based on their spouse’s record. We have published a paper on derived entitlement, which covers the projected outcomes for people as a result of removing these provisions. As one may expect, individuals reaching pension age in the few years before April 2016 will have similar national insurance records to those reaching pension age in the few years after April 2016. As such, we can assume that the proportion of women in the cohort under question retiring under the current system who benefit from derived entitlement is broadly similar to the proportion of women reaching pension age just after 2016 who may be disadvantaged.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

Will the noble Lord write to us and spell that last comment out? If I understood it correctly, it was very revealing. He might like to repeat that last sentence for us and then perhaps enlarge on it in a subsequent letter.

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, it is now in Hansard. We will spend some time on derived entitlement in later clauses, rather than going through that issue now. We will, I know, spend an awful lot of time on derived entitlement thanks to a certain set of amendments from the noble Baroness, so I have no fear at all that I will not be utterly explicit on this matter before the end of this Committee.

At Second Reading, the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, recognised that a line had to be drawn somewhere, but she asked the House to think carefully about whether it is right that twins of different genders should find themselves in different positions. Equally, one could ask whether it would be fair for people who reach state pension age on the same day—for example, the 65 year-old man and the 61 year-old woman—to be in different positions. The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, is absolutely right that a line has to be drawn. We have been clear and consistent that only people reaching pension age after the new system is implemented may receive a single-tier pension.

The noble Baroness asked whether these women would lose out. It is not a question of this particular cohort losing out; they simply will not receive a single-tier pension, just like everyone else reaching pension age before 2016. The Government have not changed these women’s state pension age and so there has not been a change in the pension that these women were expecting. Regarding the leading question on discrimination raised by the noble Baroness, I can confirm that any difference in treatment is as a result of the legislation providing for the change in pension age, which is not in this Bill, and we are satisfied that there is no breach of Article 14 of the ECHR on grounds of sex. This is justifiable in helping to pursue legitimate aims and achieving them in a timely way to achieve an equality of state pension outcomes between men and women generally.

[Lord Freud]

That legal advice covers the full gamut of the legal position. On pension sharing, the average number of share orders is currently running to around 100 a year, so there is in practice a negligible impact on the gains and losses. We have written to all the cohorts affected by equalisation—

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

We will come on to pension sharing later in much greater detail, but I am sure that the Minister will want to confirm to my noble friend that, as I understand it, the number of inquiries is 20,000-odd, compared to the number of take-ups. Secondly, I presume that what he is talking about is pension sharing in future only of the additional state pension, whereas of course at the moment anyone divorced can also take on the existing NI record—the basic state pension—of their former spouse if it is more favourable than their own. There are two sets of preferences or advantages to divorcees in play and only the first of those will continue, while the second will go.

[Lord Freud]

I can confirm what the noble Baroness says: I am talking about the additional pension, not the state pension.

To summarise: the women in this group are getting the pension that they expected when they expected it. We have produced analysis on this group of women as well as on the impact of changes to derived entitlement. We need a clear start for the changes and, in line with the 2010 reforms, believe that that should be based on reaching state pension age. I urge the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

[Lord Freud]

It will be easier if I push that analysis of the figures into the letter-writing process rather than trying to summarise it off the top of my head, because it is quite complicated.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

The Minister has been generous in giving us access to his Box, but a lot of our queries and questions came up as we were writing our amendments, after we had talked to the Box. We therefore fully understand that the Minister is not able to give us some of the detail, which requires some fairly elaborate statistical cross-cutting behind the scenes.

[Lord Freud]

I thank the noble Baroness for that. I was going to suggest that we can come back to this. We have run some sessions with the team, who are doing a magnificent job. This is central stuff; all the things that we are covering today and on Wednesday are technical and difficult. One of the things that I could offer would be another session on this area between Committee and Report. I think that on Report we will want to boil down what the real issues are and what the real amendments should be, because otherwise we will spend a lot of time, sound and fury on issues that are not quite the point that anyone was trying to make.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

I think that that is prudent. We are dealing with a lot of stats. Certainly, I read the evidence from people who were witnesses to the Committee in the other place, as well as some of the stuff that came out in the Minister’s interrogation and speeches in Committee. Some of the discrepancies between that and what I call the “Apple Green Paper”—as that White Paper is neither white nor green—are because they cut the stats in different ways, and it is very difficult, if you do not have research staff, to recalibrate them to address some of the questions. We are not in any sense trying to put the Minister on the spot; we just want to elucidate, as far as we can, the information, so that we have a shared common body of knowledge on which we can base our estimate and analysis of this Bill. As the noble Lord will agree, that is primarily the job of this House, above all others.

I thank the noble Lords, Lord Paddick and Lord Kirkwood, for commenting on this amendment. In response to the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, I took it for granted that there would be accrued rights. However, if there had not been, the courts would have rather a lot to say about that. In every pensions Bill we have ever done—the 2004 Act, and so on—that has been established. It is good that the calculations, certainly in the paper and all the rest of it, are so clear as to what people can expect. That is very welcome.

To the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, I say that the point that I was trying to make is not that all men were in the same position as all women between the ages of 60 and 65. However, essentially, of men who chose to take early retirement only about 2% or 3% chose to go on to JSA or incapacity benefit in that period. The others went on to IS and were topped up by PC. Those men who chose to take early retirement were effectively retiring at the same age as women. That may, to a degree, have been forced on them by unemployment, but they had a choice. They could have gone on to JSA but, perfectly sensibly, they chose not to do so. Instead they went into effectively a pension regime, originally from the age of 60, which was when the age for women was the same.

Of course, other men, who were in work, carried on building up their pension until age 65, primarily because those between 60 and 65 on PCs still carried on adding to their NI years, as I recall. However, those other men were able to build up their additional pension and thus protect it as they went through—essentially, SERPS. Women of that age would have had little, if any, entitlement to SERPS. They would have had entitlement—as will younger women—to S2P, primarily because of the extension of the credits that apply to them, particularly for childcare. Those were introduced quite late, so those women will not, for the most part, have had access to an additional state pension. Men who continue to work to 65, as most of them will—the noble Lord is right on that—will continue to build up that additional pension, which will be protected after they are 65.

The Government are taking a swings and roundabouts approach on this. I think that 167,000—originally 235,000 in 2009-10, and before that a higher figure—had the choice of the same pension as women, age for age. Women have had no such choice. That is why they face cliff edges in a way that men do not. The problem for us has been about cliff edges. The point that I was trying to push was that men did not face any cliff edges. Whatever their age when they retired after 60, they could have a smooth pension level that was the same as women, then they progressed quite nicely at 65; if that happens after 5 April 2016, they will move on to the new pension. Women have no such choice. If they tick their pension, the same as the men, at 63 the shutters come down and they can never move that next step on to the new state pension, which men could in their situation. Women have a cliff edge, while men have a nice smooth path down to paddling in the sea. That is what I was primarily concerned about.

The problem comes as we recognise that we should try to equalise the state pension age at the same time as the Government are introducing the new state pension. I recognise the difficulty. When I started work on this I took pretty much the Minister’s line—that this was on the one hand or on the other—but the more I worked on pension credit, the more I saw the number of people claiming it and how substantial their numbers were. Not 5,000 or 10,000 but a fifth of all men claiming pension credit claim it before they are 65. That means, in terms of savings and the rest of it, that many of them will have gone on to claim that after 65 under the old system. Given that substantial number, it is worth emphasising that women have had a double hit and men have had a smooth transition throughout. Whatever the Minister may argue—and I understand his stats—if you hold up the gender filter to this issue, you can see exactly, as my noble friend said in her speech, why women, rightly, feel hard done by. They are faced with a cliff edge and have no way of ameliorating it, unlike men have had over the past few years—in some cases the past five years—of their working-age lives.

However, we have gone as far as we can until we get further information from the Minister that may or may not help us to progress on this issue. With the consent of the Committee, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 3 withdrawn.

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[Lord McKenzie of Luton (Lab)]

My Lords, this is a gentle, probing amendment designed to give some respite to the Minister and to explore further the details of what is planned about the nature and extent of the communication strategy envisaged for the introduction of the single-tier state pension. The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, touched on this, as did the Minister in responding to the first group of amendments.

We have been provided with a certain amount of information in the various briefing packs and we have had the opportunity to peruse the overarching strategy for communicating the reforms, which has been made available in the Library. I take this opportunity to commend the Bill team. We do not want to heap too much praise on them, as this is just the start of our proceedings, but I think that we have had some genuinely good information packs, which have helped. The problem with good information packs, of course, is that they generate additional queries, so forgive me if I pursue some of them.

One objective of the strategy is, rightly, to inform people about the impact of the reforms on their individual circumstances and the actions that they may take to improve them. That aspect is of particular relevance to the amendment. It seems to me that the state pension statement is to be the key way in which this communication is delivered, so the Minister may wish to comment on the statutory underpinning of such statements, if it exists, and on whether this might be improved.

Although the amendment focuses on STP, it does not negate the need to communicate to those who retire before 6 April 2016, especially in relation to the extended arrangements for paying voluntary NICs and the new class 3A NICs to improve state second pensions. I ask the Minister specifically what is planned in this regard. I suppose, given our earlier debates, that the key communication issue for those who retire before 6 April 2016 is why they are in a separate category, although I do not want to revisit the debate that we have just had.

Issues relating to the new class 3A have obviously not yet been fully developed and those who might be eligible are a definable group of all those who reach state pension age before 2016. The group that are particularly in need of information are those who are entitled to a state pension at the transitional rate. If they are to be encouraged to make rational savings decisions, such information as their foundation amount, any protected payments, the rebate derived amount where appropriate or any derived and inherited entitlement is key. Individuals should be made aware of how the revaluation of the various components is to work and they will need to be alerted to their potentially not meeting the minimum qualifying period, having fewer than 35 qualifying years, as well as not being able to add further to their STP.

It is understood that this information is still to flow via state pension statements, but following implementation of the STP it is not planned to make it proactively available, either as soon as the NIC information is available up to 5 April 2016 or otherwise. A post-implementation statement will be provided on demand and digitally but not otherwise, as I understand it.

A number of questions therefore arise. Can the Minister clarify precisely what is to happen between Royal Assent and in advance of implementation so far as state pension statements are concerned? Will these be made available proactively or will individuals have to ask for them? It is understood why a digital service is to be developed for post-implementation—that is to be welcomed—but there will be some for whom the digital approach will be difficult. That is surely the experience of universal credit. What other support will be available to these people? There is clearly some merit in being able to take stock of one’s state pension provision as close to 6 April 2016 as possible, so can the Minister say how long it is expected to be before the 2015-16 national insurance data will generally be available at individual level? How long does it take for that to filter through to the records?

Given more complex situations, how quickly is it envisaged that individuals will be informed of all their pension components, including the rebate-derived amounts, after 6 April 2016? What, if any, capacity will there be in the system for individuals to query, challenge or even appeal the details that they receive? We are told that there is not the capacity in the system to provide full details to everyone proactively—like the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, I think that there is a measure of concern about that. Just what is the capacity to provide such details for those who would likely be entitled to a state pension at the transitional rate? We are told that, post-implementation, state pension statements are to be provided on demand. Those who are clued up and digitally savvy will cope, but what monitoring will be undertaken to see what is happening to those who are not? What particular communication strategies are to be focused on the self-employed, who will be brought more fully into the system than hitherto?

Although the components of the calculation will generally be more straightforward for those who grow up entirely in the new system, they will still need information so that they can be reassured on their likely level of state pension income and the desirability of saving. Of course, some may enter the new system part way through their working life because, for example, they had been working abroad or had just decided to join the labour market. What in terms of communications is planned for those in this position? I accept that much of this will be work in progress, but I do not want to miss the opportunity to get an update on the latest position before we leave Committee. I beg to move.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, I want to comment very briefly. I declare an interest, which I know is relevant to this amendment, as a board member of the Pensions Advisory Service. TPAS has recently completed a survey of just under 1,000 women on their pensions which makes the point absolutely for my noble friend’s request for an information and communication strategy to go out to prospective pensioners and pensioners. Of that 1,000 women, 36% did not know when their state pension would be paid; 74% did not know how much they would receive; 57% did not know whether there was a shortfall in their NI record; 25% do not know that the age is likely to change again; 54% have made no changes to their retirement plans; 27% wonder whether they will have to work longer; and 76% do not expect to be financially comfortable in retirement. I have before me a lot of quotes, some of which I may choose to use later on. Those figures suggest how wilfully uninformed far too many women are about what will happen to them over the next couple of years. That evidence from a TPAS sample substantiates my noble friend’s points.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, I shall have to speak very quietly because I have lost my voice, so if anybody fails to hear to me, I will shout a bit louder after a few days. I just wanted to add to the important points made by the noble Lord. I can always remember receiving my state pension statement. It was a bit of a shock, because I always thought that I was so young that I would never receive one, but it did happen.

The most important aspect of this legislation is clarification of the words as they are written out, because this is a very complex set of arrangements and they need to have clarity of language. Those statements which I have seen are quite clear. I do not hold so negative a view as to how people will see the future world of their pensions. Just today, we have heard that we have now reached 2 million people enrolling in auto-enrolment for pensions—that is, 2 million more than there were 12 months or so ago who know about a pension because they have got into it. We have 3,500 employers. I welcome the British Heart Foundation, which has recently enrolled all its staff. So we know that people are becoming more involved and engaged with their pensions.

The second thing relates to something which happened to me last Friday. I was doing Lords outreach with two schools and the pension question came up. I do not know whether it had been planted by a teacher in advance but it came up. It is quite clear that when these matters are scrutinised, young people are beginning to realise that if we do not put those matters right they, too, will be having to pay more. I always save for my grandchildren, who are enthusiastic to hear that they will be paying to sustain me into older life—but, of course, I am not a recipient of the new single-tier pension. However, when we talk about this issue I wonder whether we should also try to include in it education from a younger age, so that when people receive any financial education within their school life, they can understand that pensions are not a matter for tomorrow or for when you are retiring; they are a matter for the day on which you start to pay and earn. This is a probing amendment but it is very important that, along with other measures which are going on, pensions are seen as an issue for all from now on and not one for when you are retired.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, and the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, for this opportunity for the Government to set out our actions to support people in this area. I need to point out that when the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, says that he is offering some relief, I am reminded of the song by Tom Lehrer about sliding down the razor blade of life, but there we are.

On the noble Lord’s first question about the new class 3A voluntary NICs, we will have a debate in the new year, and will work with stakeholders to get a clear and simple offer to pensioners, which will include how we publicise that new scheme, so that information will be available.

Including financial education in the school curriculum and increasing young people’s financial capability is an issue of importance to this Government and apposite to the point raised by my noble friend Lord German. In July 2013, the Department for Education published a national curriculum framework with increased focus on financial literacy in both the mathematics and citizenship curricula. This will be taught in schools from September 2014. In 2012, we established the Money Advice Service to help people manage their money more effectively and better understand financial products, including pensions. The Money Advice Service is one of our key partners in providing information to individuals who are being automatically enrolled into workplace pensions. The department has also played an active role in developing the Money Advice Service’s new financial capability strategy to help tackle the knowledge gaps which can inhibit individuals from saving in pensions.

We know that the delivery of information and government policy around financial capability has the potential to build trust and engagement in pension saving, and we are proud of our progress in this area. Our Automatic Enrolment and Pensions Language Guide, developed with partners in the pensions and financial services industry, promotes a consistent and simplified use of language in order to ensure that individuals seeking advice can better understand the information. In October this year the Government published updated regulations setting out the information that occupational and personal pension schemes are obliged to provide to their members, and the frequency with which this is to be done.

I turn specifically to the state pension reforms in the Bill. We are committed to taking action to help people to understand the reforms that we are making and what it will mean for them. As noble Lords know, the current state pension system is fiendishly complicated. In a 2012 survey, in response to a simple true/false question, only one-third of people agreed that it was true that the Government provided a second state pension related to previous earnings. The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, noted its complexity and gave lots of saddening statistics. That is precisely why we are reforming the system to make it—in principle—comprehensive to as many people as possible. We are tackling this systemic problem by creating a simpler state pension so that everyone can know both what counts towards their state pension and how much they can expect to receive. However, we recognise that the benefits of this simpler system can be realised only if we communicate the changes effectively to the public.

I turn to the noble Lord‘s amendment about the timely provision of individualised state pension information. The Department for Work and Pensions currently offers a state pension statement service, which allows people to request an estimate of how much state pension they may get, based on their national insurance record to date. Last year, 2012-13, over 600 statements were provided.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

Six hundred?

[Lord Freud]

Six hundred thousand statements were provided. I assure the noble Lord that we intend to continue to provide people with an on-demand state pension statement service after the introduction of single tier in 2016. Our intention is that the service will be predominantly, though not exclusively, digital—

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

Why on demand? Why not automatically, as a right?

[Lord Freud]

The cost of providing it to absolutely everyone in the country would be large and, in capacity terms, would be too great to be able to cover everyone on that basis.

[Lord Freud]

One of the issues here is that we will need to talk, or write, to people who cannot get the information in the digital way that we are planning as our primary way of communicating. Clearly we will be in a position to do that but, until we have the service up and running, it is difficult to estimate what the underlying demand might be.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

The more the Minister describes this, the unhappier I get. The people who most need the information are those who least know that they need to know it—they do not know what they do not know. For me, that was the clear result from the TPAS survey: they did not know that changes were happening and they did not know when they were going to retire or how much they were going to get, and they had not done anything about it because they did not know what to do. That is the first problem: that those who request it—the Minister’s 600,000 a year—are those who are probably more alert to pension issues and more capable of responding in that way.

The second point if we are going to do this digitally is that we are talking about a group, particularly women, who may very well not have access to any such digital back-up at all. My housing association is already seeing issues with this in spades regarding the universal credit. I am doubly worried if, first, we are only responsive to requests and, secondly, if we propose to do this digitally, those who most need help will not get it and they will be the ones who suffer an impaired pension, even though, had the Government acted differently, they might have had enough time to turn the situation around.

[Lord Freud]

Well, my Lords, I can just take you through our plans in this area so let me continue to do that. For those who cannot get digital information, we will ensure that they can still get the information they need. Our statements will give individuals their up-to-date state pension position, including their foundation amount, based on their national insurance record to that point. Where appropriate, the statement will tell them how many further national insurance qualifying years they need to reach the full amount of single-tier pension. As noble Lords will appreciate, it takes a few months at the end of every tax year to ensure full consolidation of national insurance records. However, as now, people will still be able to get a statement based on their contributions up to the previous tax year, and we will update our statements to reflect people’s full record for their pre-2016 years as soon as the relevant data are in place.

PAYE records are now mainly electronic but we are working on an assumption that records on account should be ready by October 2016 for the April introduction. As for the timetable for sending out statements, we can give people accurate information on their single-tier position when all their contribution and credits to that point are recorded on their national insurance record. From Royal Assent, we will include simple information about single tier, including the relevance of this estimate in terms of working out their single-tier foundation amount. From implementation in April 2016, our intention is to provide an on-demand, largely digital, statement service.

Regarding the noble Lord’s question on querying the details, in practice relatively few people currently actually do query. However, we want to ensure that the default position is as simple as possible and we will, as now, ensure that where it is required people can get a detailed breakdown of the calculation. For people who are unable to access digital media, we will ensure that they receive the support they require in a non-digital way and we will work that up. To revert to the point on the implied question of issuing everyone with a statement, the issuance of a large number of unprompted statements—potentially millions of statements—would be expensive in terms of IT costs, production costs, postage and staff. Our evaluation of previous unprompted statement exercises show that there has been little, if any, benefit, and solicited statements are a better way of getting information to people.

I turn now to the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross. We know that the statement service alone will not be sufficient to inform and educate the public about the simplifications to the state pension system. We are developing a wide-ranging communications strategy, informed and supported by work across government to build financial capability. This will sit alongside the work I described earlier around improving the provision of information across the pensions industry.

To communicate on the single-tier reforms, with HMRC we are already carrying out research, testing language and building on the lessons learnt from automatic enrolment. We are in contact with front-line workers and consumer representative groups. Clearly, it will be important to have an effective mechanism in place for assessing the impact of our communications activity. This will form a key part of our communications strategy. We will publish a detailed update of our communications strategy in the new year, setting out how we will raise awareness and understanding. We will of course communicate that with noble Lords from the outset.

I hope that I have assured the noble Lord and the noble Baroness that the Government are fully committed to ensuring people will continue to have access to information on their state pension position to enable them to plan effectively for their retirement and, as previously stated, we will share our communications strategy with noble Lords.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

As ever, I am grateful to the Minister for his full reply. I think that I have ended up slightly more concerned than when I started on this amendment. I also thank all noble Lords who have participated in this debate. First, specifically the Minister referred to the opportunity to challenge a statement to see whether the information was right, which is not routinely done at the moment. I can understand that. Is there technically a right of appeal or does that arise only when the pension falls due for payment?

I do not think that we got an answer to the point made by my noble friend Lady Sherlock as regards at what point someone would receive a communication. I think the answer to that is that it would be only at the point at which they asked for it. I can see that an educational policy, financial literacy, and all those issues dealt with by the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, and the noble Lord, Lord German, are important and may give an enhanced understanding for people. I am trying to understand what would happen if there is no proactive approach. You could end up with very few people asking for a statement, and the percentage of people in the new system getting an early statement seems to be low. I still do not think that we have the answer to the question about the capacity of the department to respond to queries if there are more than the current 600,000 requested statements. I would have thought that there is at least some prospect of a bit of a flood of inquiries at least at the start when people seek to understand the new position, particularly if the broader education approach is to help and encourage people to understand what their potential provision will be in due course and, therefore, what additional saving they might, if they are able, undertake.

I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Hollis, as ever, about some very helpful data which really underlines the importance of getting these communications right. The noble Lord, Lord German, made the point that this is not just for people who are retired or just about to retire. This is a broader issue about helping young people as well to understand the importance of saving. I had not heard the figure of the 2 million people who auto-enrolled. I am grateful for that. It is a huge achievement and it is great to have it announced while sitting next to my noble friend who was so instrumental in getting that under way.

Obviously, I will withdraw this probing amendment. I hope that the Minister may be able to fill in some of the gaps but I am still left very uncertain as to how most people will get that information expeditiously. I would have thought that most would want it.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

Will the Minister think about the possibility of, say, when someone hits the age of 50, a pension statement or whatever being sent out? The whole push of the Government’s programme has been that people should have enough time to be able to make good any shortfall in their record.

They cannot do it six months before they are due to retire. If a statement was sent at 50 and then the usual one was sent a year before retirement when people may or may not be in a position to consider voluntary NICs or something like that, even that would be helpful if a statement cannot be sent out each and every year. I take the point about cost and effort but people need some snapshots so that they know what the position is as they go along at the ages of 50, 55, 60, 64 or whatever. Otherwise, we will find that a hell of a lot of people are going to remain on pension credit and two legacy systems will be running for 40 years.

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I shall try to consolidate where we are here. We will provide full information on our communication strategy, and noble Lords will see that. We know that how and when you communicate is very important, and having a generalised communication strategy may not be most appropriate. As the noble Baroness said, there are particular points where we might want to get over particular bits of information, as is currently the case where people are informed about, for instance, the number of years of national insurance contributions that they have made when they reach a certain age. I would imagine that a sensible communication strategy, which we will show to noble Lords, will incorporate that kind of thing.

To pick up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, on appeals, people can appeal but not until state pension age, not least because, as the noble Lord will be fully aware, before then the pension is often a guesstimate. We are not able to tell people in advance what they are likely to get because the issue is so fiendishly complicated. The real question, which the noble Lord may ask, is whether, when the matter becomes dramatically simpler, we can provide that information, but then there will probably be no need for appeals.

The department tried automatic statements between 2003 and 2006, when more than 17 million were sent out. We stopped this activity after research showed us that it had a limited impact.

One issue on which we need to communicate is shortfalls and the opportunity to buy voluntary NICs. Rather than generalised information, some very targeted bits of information, particularly around that area, are far more likely to get people to respond and focus their attention on their interests.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

Perhaps I may give the noble Lord another example, and this will apply to other amendments later on. You begin to get an increasing degree of ill health among some people at the age of 50. Women are now very often entitled to a carer’s credit, which, as the Minister will know, is much less heavy in its requirements than the carer’s allowance. However, the take-up is very low. Most people do not know about it at all and it is very hard to claim it retrospectively. Only when the Minister says to people at, say, the age of 50, “You’ve got this but the following credits may be available to you under certain circumstances”, will we know whether women, as they approach 63, 64 or 65, have built up an NI record on their own. The Government cannot be passive about this; they have to provide appropriate information to allow people to know both what they need and what they can do about it. It seems that the Minister is basically responding to those who already know that there is an issue and not to those who do not but should.

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, just to wrap up this position, I do not think that any noble Lord in this Room will be under any illusion that we are not utterly determined to drive forward a transformation in both working-age and pension-age systems. One of the guiding principles for both those is simplicity so that people can understand what they are entitled to and there is an automatic process where you do not have to do so much work. It is an example of the kind of chaos that we have at the moment that people do not understand what their entitlement is. I am equally conscious of the figures in universal credit, where you have a clean working-age benefit. Two-thirds of the uplift of more than £2 billion per year that we are able to put through to people is due to giving them benefits that they do not currently claim. I do not think that there is any difference. Clearly, simplification and transformation are right at the heart of the Government’s strategy.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

5: After Clause 1, insert the following new Clause—
“Calculation of state pension
Regulations may provide that the state pension shall not be less than the single rate of the standard minimum guarantee pension credit plus 2%.”

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, I hope that Committee will forgive me if just for a second I revisit Amendment 3 and pension credit costs. I pressed the Minister, but he did not give me an answer—I would be very happy for him to write me—about the annual savings from each cohort of men falling out of pension credit and where those savings go to. That was not part of his reply and it would be good to know.

This amendment proposes a 2% head space between the new state pension and what someone would get on pension credit. Obviously, it is a probing amendment, a peg to explore what the future level of the state pension vis-à-vis pension credit will be, and to give us information about some of the winners and losers on the income analysis, on which I am sure that my noble friends will be pressing the Minister.

In particular, I want to focus on the issue of means-testing. As far as we know, eventually only something like 3% of the means-testing in the system will drop out as a result of the proposed changes. One of the great virtues of the new proposed pension was that by bringing together the BSB, S2P and pension credit, it was to leapfrog some means-testing. As my noble friend Lady Sherlock said, we had to use means-tested pension credit when we came into government because pensioner poverty for the bottom third was so acute and the number was so large that we could not financially manage a sufficient flat-rate rise for all. So we targeted our resources, and the policy worked. However, as my noble friend Lady Turner will remember, although we pushed the policy through, it was not without insistent, noisy and continuous haranguing from the late, splendid Barbara Castle, who used to sit right behind me, muttering very loudly to Muriel as I would reach some fancy point in policy, “What’s she trying to say now? What’s she trying to say now?”, to the great amusement and glee of those on the opposition Benches.

That policy removed hundreds of thousands of people from poverty, so pensioners are now less likely than any other group to come within that category of poverty. However, it came at a price. As we know, means-testing is disliked, especially by older people and, no, it is not the same as giving your income details to HMRC for tax purposes. It is highly expensive to administer and open to error—I will not say fraud—for this group.

Above all, as the Minister rightly and sympathetically identified in his previous answer to my noble friend Lord McKenzie, those entitled to pension credit, such as the self-employed unsure of their income or elderly widows whose husbands’ pensions have died with them and who have never handled the financial pension arrangements between them, do not always claim. Unlike lone parents, who are savvy and feisty about their benefits—well, usually—and have very high claim rates, pensioners do not. For example, fewer than half of those entitled to savings credit claim it. In the past, fewer than two-thirds of those entitled to council tax benefit claimed.

Endless studies were undertaken into why, and I congratulate the DWP on its fascinating in-house research published last year by Maplethorpe et al on whether we could get a significant increase in the take-up of pension credit if pensions were made to the department’s random sample of 2,000 entitled non-recipients automatically and a further 2,000 ENRs who were followed through by DWP visitors. That was an imaginative and welcome piece of research.

It is a pity that the results were, for everyone I think, really rather disappointing. The money was welcomed at the point but after the trial period of three months DWP had added only about 10% to the number claiming pension credit, which was useful but not a breakthrough, when pensioners were required to submit their own forms—in other words, take the initiative in a means-testing pension credit. As the research identifies, it is about stigma and difficulty with the forms, but also we have long found that if a pensioner had applied in the past for another means-tested benefit—HB, for example—and been refused, they thought they were ineligible for any other means-tested benefit so did not apply. If a friend or member of their family had been refused after applying, they assumed that the case applied to them too.

Many of them felt that the money they got at the end of a lengthy process was too little to be worth it. They may be right because although the savings credit mean figure is something like a loss of about £34 a week, the median is infinitely lower because it is skewed by a few very high numbers at the end. However, pensioners worried—this is partly the result of some of the problems with tax credits—that if they were wrongly paid they might face having to repay money that they subsequently could not afford. Nor are they clear about income and savings rules; some pensioners with £5,000 tucked away for funeral costs think that that disqualifies them. A few thought that as they could manage without pension credit, although they were entitled, it was morally wrong to claim it.

This research, which builds on two previous pieces of research that the DWP has done over the past 15 years on pension credit that I am aware of, suggested to me that means-tested benefits are almost inherently troubled by the failure of a substantial number of pensioners to claim, and that the new state pension is absolutely the right way to go for the future. It has to be on an automated basis. Whatever may happen to other means-tested benefits, we hope that at least pensioners’ basic income in the new state pension will be safely delivered and in full. However, means-testing will continue for the 25% of future pensioners who are not owner-occupiers but who are on housing benefit in the rented sector, or for those with incomplete NI records. The reduction in means-testing is mainly because the new pension incorporates the means-tested guaranteed credit while abolishing the means-tested savings credit. That is actually why the numbers fall.

However, if the new pension is to reduce means-testing, as we hope it will do—though at the moment the statistics do not suggest by as much as some of us had hoped—it must, to use the phrase, put clear blue water between it and the new pension. At the moment, the difference between what a pensioner would get under the three tiers of state pension, possibly some additional pension and pension credit under the new state pension, could be less than £1 a week, although the triple lock for the pension, unlike the earnings link for pension credit, should widen that gap over time if the triple lock remains. Age UK has provided figures showing that means-testing will have fallen by just 3% by 2014 from what it would have been as a result of this. However, as my amendment suggests, 2% would provide a rounder figure—a £3 gap, I guess.

I am hoping that the Minister will give us some guidance on the difference in income for each path that a person registering for the new pension will take, and the winners and losers as a result, so that we can work further on those stats before Report. The Select Committee recommended such a clear space, although it did not suggest a specific sum. The Government’s response was rather interesting. They agreed it was necessary to establish,

“a firm foundation for saving”,

but believed that it was not necessary to put that in the legislation. I do not think that is good enough. Put very crudely, there is not much point in having a massive and welcome reform of pensions structure if at the end of the day many future pensioners, mainly women, lose derived rights, and many other pensioners, mainly women, are no better off than they would have been on pension credit because the new state pension is financially not sufficiently distinctive. I beg to move.

[Baroness Drake (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall take advantage of the helpful peg of this amendment moved by my noble friend Lady Hollis. I completely accept that moving more rapidly to a flat-rate pension will bring losers and gainers. However, we need to have some confidence about the initial value of the single-tier pension and how its value will be maintained over time, in order to have confidence about the assessments of gainers and losers.

The figures and statistics that we have are based on the assumption of triple-lock uprating, which is far from assured over time. We know that the single-tier pension has to produce a series of outcomes: it has to be above the guarantee credit to address the disincentive to save; it has to be set at a level which reduces reliance on means-tested benefits; and it has to provide a firm foundation for private saving. However, whether it achieves those intentions depends in part on the starting value of the single tier and how its value moves over time. The White Paper therefore suggested that a single-tier pension should be worth £144 in 2012-13 earnings terms, but the extent to which the single-tier pension figure is to be set above the pension guarantee credit is very unclear.

At the time of the White Paper’s publication in January 2013, the illustrative £144 was only £1.30 higher than the guarantee credit—less than 1%—which was lower than the figure in the Green Paper, when the £140 illustrative figure was £7.40 above the guarantee credit, which is nearly 6% higher. In 2013-14 earnings terms, £144 would be worth £146.30—just 90p above the guaranteed credit of £145.40. We therefore have a lack of confidence about what the level of the single-tier pension will be at its introduction, what its uprating is likely to be over time and what its relationship with the guarantee credit is likely to be.

The rate of the new state pension will be set in regulations, and it is important to have some confidence about government thinking. The Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee commented that,

“we draw to the attention of the House that, for the first time, the rate of the state pension will be specified only in subordinate regulation”.

The Government’s impact assessment assumes uprating by the triple lock, but the assumptions about gainers and losers and pension adequacy could be significantly different if the triple lock were not applied. I also note that, when it comes to assessing gainers and losers, the notional figures include the previously contracted-out individuals. In one of the very helpful briefing sessions that we have been afforded, I asked whether we could see the notional figures for gainers and losers, excluding those contracted out at April 2016, in the hope that we could get a clearer picture of winners and losers. I was particularly interested in understanding more clearly who the winners and losers were from the base of the actual amounts that contracted-in individuals receive. I was interested to read a report this weekend, albeit in the Corporate Adviser. I quote from the article:

“The figures for mean gross state pensions, which give the clearest official picture of the level of combined basic and secondary pension of contracted in workers, have been omitted from the ONS’s 2013 Pension Trends paper”.

I understand that the reason for that is information provided by the DWP. For the sake of debate and for clarity, net state pension figures are only those payments paid directly by the state, whereas gross state pension figures are estimates of the total entitlement to additional state pension, which include those elements paid by private pension schemes that are contracted out.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Freud]

For the noble Baroness’s sake, I shall repeat what I just said. I will write to confirm that they are net, although I hardly need to do so. I will write to say what the position is with gross analysis at this particular moment. I do not know whether that is to say that they are available, not available or whatever. I will just write to let the noble Baroness know the position.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

I am sure that the Minister will understand our need for clarity on some of these issues—whether it is net or gross; mean, median or average and so on—because they completely reshape the statistical base on which some of us are trying to base some of our contributions. The Minister is patient in taking our comments on this point, but we really need to know and we have not always had the statistics in ways that have allowed us to read across in a straightforward and simple form. This is not the fault of the Box; it is simply because that is the way in which, classically, statistics have been collected.

I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Drake, who emphasised both the need to deliver the Green Paper promises of a substantial headspace between the pension credit regime and the new state pension, and the way in which this is becoming narrowed. As my noble friend Lady Sherlock said, it is becoming very hard to calculate. I was checking back on what the Select Committee on Work and Pensions actually called for, and I really do not understand why the Minister cannot do this for us. The committee said in paragraph 34:

“There is no certainty about how long the triple lock will be in place and we believe that it is important that there is as much clear water as possible between the rate of the STP and that of Pension Credit. There appears to be scope for a bigger differential (either at the outset or over time) given the increased National Insurance revenue that the Government will derive from the ending of contracting-out and the overall long-term savings which will be made on”,

pension credit,

“expenditure as a result of the introduction of the STP. We therefore recommend”—

and I do not understand why the Minister cannot go along with this—

“that, when the Bill is before Parliament in the summer”—

that is, in the prior discussions at the other end—

“the Government publishes an analysis of (a) the cost of setting the STP rate at a range of higher levels; and (b) the level at which the STP could be funded if the additional NI revenue was used for this purpose”.

The Minister says that the whole of this project has to be cost-neutral. Yes, to an extent, but of course it is cost-neutral within a growing demographic population. When he talks about it being cost-neutral, I am never sure how much he is looking at the rise in life expectancy and so on and therefore at the number of claimants coming through, particularly for the post-war bulge. After all, the GDP figures show a drop for this group in going to pensions of something like 8.9%—I think I am right; I am doing this from memory—or about 8.23%. That is a significant drop in projected GDP going to a cohort that will actually have increased in number. When the Government say that this has to be cost-neutral, therefore, it seems to me that in practice, unless I have misunderstood the Minister, that could be achieved only by allowing the real value of the new state pension to fall simultaneously with the real value of pension credit. Perhaps he might like to write to us to confirm whether that is the case. However, as I have said, I do not understand why he cannot respond to what seems to be an entirely appropriate piece of analysis that was recommended by the Select Committee. Perhaps he could write to us and explain why it cannot be done.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

Before my noble friend sits down, does she agree that the drop in the share of GDP would have been even greater had the uprating been by way of earnings rather than by the triple lock? It is maintained even at that 0.6% drop because of the triple lock assumption, which is far from guaranteed, as I understand it.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My noble friend is exactly right and I thank him for that. Perhaps the Minister could write to us on why this is not possible. Why we cannot follow previous legislation in doing pension Bills, I do not understand.

[Lord Freud]

Maybe to save myself a bit of ink in letters, I should point out that we have done the range of start rates. In the White Paper, we showed it at the £144 point and the £145 point, and to increase the figure by £1 would cost £500 million by 2030.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

On what price basis—is that in real terms, in today’s money? What are we talking about?

[Lord Freud]

Clearly, a quote done at that time would be using the money of the day. We would not be doing it in cash terms; we would be doing it in today’s money, or the money of that day. Yes, it was 2013-14 money.

On the question of neutrality, the reforms would cost no more than the current system overall and will not be more generous to future pensioners, so the additional national insurance revenue will not be recycled within the state pension system but will contribute to other reforms such as the cap on social care costs and the employment allowance, as announced in the Budget 2013.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, I have to say that I am not persuaded by those responses but at this point, I will withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 5 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

7: Clause 2, page 1, line 13, at end insert “including any additional years that person may have bought back either on his pre 6 April or on his post 6 April 2016 contribution record”

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, Amendment 7 is another probing amendment so that we understand the buyback rules. By virtue of the Bill raising the number of qualifying years from 30 to 35, there will be some people, mostly women, who will come to retirement age with an incomplete NI record. I should emphasise here that in terms of buyback I am not talking about class 3A—the new proposals for the additional pension. Some of those missing basic years may have occurred before 2016; some may occur afterwards. It is crucial that we help people to have a complete record, otherwise many will need topping up by pension credit.

Buyback, as members of the Committee will know, comes through making class 3 contributions—what we call voluntary NICs. They cost around £13 a week, which is about £700 for the purchase of one year, and add £3 to £4 to your pension, for life, so that you get a payback within three to four years. That is a return of more than 25% on your capital, so it is a very good deal if the arrangements stay the same. Obviously, the class 3A proposals are meant to be actuarially neutral, so I imagine that they will not be as attractive. You can buy those extra years in the year that you are missing a class 1 contribution—husbands have sometimes bought them for their stay-at-home wives and rich kids have sometimes had their parents buy them for them—or you can revisit the record of your NI contributions close to retirement and see how many more you need to get a full state pension. If you can afford to, you can then buy back contributions for the missing years.

In the past, you were allowed to buy back your missing years either as you went along, so that they were current, or to buy back the last six years, especially at retirement. If you had missed a year, say 15 years before, it meant that you could not retrospectively cover it by buyback. That was changed after 2006 so that you could buy back any six years. That was particularly useful to women who might have taken a year or three off, say 10 years before, when they accompanied their husband to his new job in a new city or because her working life had, for a couple of years, been interrupted by caring responsibilities for which she could not then have been credited.

The Government have said, as I understand it, that up until April 2023 you can buy back missing years to 2006, which is good news. I have some questions. First, will that happen if you have already retired? In other words, could someone retiring in 2021 decide to buy back additional missing years? Or must, as in the past, that purchase take place within a year of retirement? Secondly, are you limited in the number of years you can retrospectively purchase to, say, six years within those 16, or could you in theory purchase up to 16 years at or after retirement—for example, if you are lucky enough to have a legacy, or something?

Thirdly, are you still able to purchase up to six missing years in any years before 2006, or has that now been wiped out? That is key. Those were the years for which women particularly suffered before the credit system was made more generous. I think that I am right to say that women who gained NI credits for their children up to 16, which is now reduced to 12, should be okay, given buyback to 2006, but what of the situation of a woman carer not eligible for the carer’s allowance but who today would be eligible for carer’s credit, which did not exist before 2006? If she were caring for a couple of elderly relatives, between, say, 2000 and 2004, she might well have lost several years of NI credit. Can she buy those years back?

As I said, I am not referring to the new class 3A. I would be grateful if the Minister could clarify that and put the rules on record. I beg to move.

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Hollis for opening what appears, from the expressions of those in the Minister’s Box, to be an unexpected line of engagement in the complex issues with which we are dealing.

The issue of buying back national insurance contributions has been engaged with most recently, as the Minister will realise, in 2006, when the six-year buyback was relaxed in certain circumstances of some complexity. I am conscious that we are moving inexorably towards the clauses in the Bill which in the House of Commons were described as being the complex clauses, which deal with transition. Clauses 2 and 3 deal with entitlement to single-tier pension where the national insurance contributions are all close to 2016, because of the provision in Clause 4(1)(c), but this seems as good a place as any to deal with this issue, which may well have been properly engaged with under a later clause because it lies within the years that my noble friend is interested in—more in the transitional phase than the projected phase of post 2016.

It is none the less a valuable issue. It allows me to take advantage of a completely coincidental e-mail which I received at exactly 4 pm today. With the permission of the Committee, I will read this set of personal circumstances to the Committee. I think that it illustrates the real challenge that the limitations generate for real people. I cannot imagine that this woman who has written to me and, probably, to other Members of the Committee, is unique. I will protect her identity by anonymising her, but will read just a couple of paragraphs to the Committee, if I may.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I must have swallowed my “eight”. I apologise for my grammar. I add that there is no cliff edge with these reforms.

I welcome the opportunity to put on the record that single-tier pensioners will continue to be able to fill gaps in their national insurance record by buying back qualifying years of voluntary national insurance contributions. These will be taken into account regardless of when they are paid. If they correspond to a pre-2016 tax year, they will be included in the calculation of a person’s foundation amount. If they are paid in respect of a post-2016 year, they will count towards their total single-tier amount.

Given that we are in the process of reforming the state pension system, the Government have recently made changes to the arrangements for voluntary contributions to ensure that people can wait until they are able to request their foundation amount after implementation, before making decisions on buying additional years. We have adjusted the rules for people reaching state pension age under single tier to extend the time limits for paying voluntary contributions to 5 April 2023, for the tax years from 2006-07 to 2015-16. Usually, contributions are paid at a higher rate if more than two years have elapsed from the year in which they were due, but this rule will be suspended until 6 April 2019. This will mean that a person retiring after 2016 will have had a considerable amount of time, up to 17 years since the relevant gap occurred, in which to decide whether to pay voluntary contributions.

So people will be able to buy after the state pension age point. They can buy back as many as they need, right down to 2006, so if someone reaches their state pension age in, for instance, 2018, they can buy 12 years. I hope that I have addressed the noble Baroness’s points, and ask her to withdraw the amendment.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, what the Minister has said is what I expected to be the case. However, he has failed to say whether the changes that we made in 2008 will be sustained—that is, whether, either before 2016 or after it, you can buy back years that were missed before 2006. I am perfectly well aware that you can go back to 2006 and carry on buying back to that date right up until April 2023, and I am pleased that the Minister was able to confirm that for us, but can you buy back years that were missed in, say, 2000 or 2003, up to 2006, which was sustained as a result of the 2008 Act? This all came into being in the first place because NIRS2 was flaky, and we turned mechanical failure into a moral virtue.

[Lord Freud]

No, let me provide clarity. The system does not let people buy back years before the 2006-07 point. We have relaxed the time limits because of the uncertainty around the new system. However, it is an insurance system, with the basic principle that you cannot insure after the event.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Freud]

Without indulging in too much nostalgia, particularly as I was not present in 2008—or was not present here—that relaxation was because of the change from 39 qualifying years to 30. That was specifically introduced to exclude the cliff edge, and the concession was only for people reaching their state pension age before 2008. As I said, I do not think that we need to get over-nostalgic. As they move through into the new single-tier system, both before and afterwards, people now have a broad ability to purchase extensive voluntary national insurance contributions, and of course we are adding to that capability with the new class 3A voluntary contributions. Therefore, there will now be a substantial opportunity for people to buy state pension.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, I am sorry but I really disagree with the Minister on this. My noble friend Lord Browne showed rather movingly how losing the 60% dependency pension along with a failure to claim credits and the limitations on buyback that will continue to happen interlock to ensure that a woman who has done “the right thing” by her family at every point that she has been asked to make a decision, putting her family interest ahead of her own, will end up with an inadequate, incomplete and pretty minimal basic state pension. That was why we fought quite hard in those years to enable people to buy back missing years. I can see no moral difference between a rich kid living in Antibes having the money paid for them by their father as they sail around the place and a woman who failed to complete a year’s contributions because she accompanied her husband when he moved jobs or because she was caring for somebody and was not eligible for carer’s credit and is not allowed to buy back. The time limit of six years or so is entirely arbitrary to suit the convenience of the DWP and to try to impose this measure on people’s very different and complicated lives.

I still think that our position was right and that the position taken by the department and the Minister is wrong. By 2030 or so this will not be an issue, but a lot of people are going to retire in 2016 and their missing years will not be from 2006 to 2016 but from 1995 or 2000. The Minister is now telling us that those people cannot buy back the missing years, even at an appropriate price, although it will be no problem for somebody 10 years down the road to buy back years from 15 years beforehand. That inconsistency, as well as a failure to recognise the problems that many women have had in the past—which have bedevilled pension issues—in building up a coherent NI record, will remain with us if the Minister is not able to move on this front.

[Lord Freud]

Perhaps I may respond to a clearly impassioned speech by pointing out that we have announced the introduction of the purchase of voluntary national insurance class 3A contributions, and that is there precisely for the reasons that concern the noble Baroness. There will now be an opportunity to buy voluntary NICs and we will give full details of that.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

Forgive me, but class 3A is for the additional state pension and not for the BSP. It will also be actuarially neutral, which means that it is going to be infinitely more costly. Nor have we heard any details. Unless I am mistaken, I do not think that this addresses the fact that a diminishing cohort of women will have spotty NI records by virtue of putting their family first at key points in their lives, just as my noble friend so eloquently described to us. The Minister has made no provision for them at all.

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I need to point out that we have a comprehensive means-tested system. People who have fallen through the net will be supported by that system. That is the way in which we have devised the support network for people who do not have a contributory record.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, I shall withdraw the amendment, but I would have thought that the Minister would do everything possible to reduce the number of people having to fall back on pension credit as a safety net as opposed to getting them into the new system provided they pay their way. They have taken on these family responsibilities and are willing to pay for it, and the Minister is saying no.

[Lord Browne of Ladyton]

My noble friend may wish to take this opportunity to have recorded the apparent inconsistency between the new policy, which allows class 3A national insurance contributions to be paid in an unlimited fashion—or if not entirely unlimited then in an extensive fashion—and the restriction of six years on class 3 national insurance contributions. She may wish to consider whether there is some indication of a relaxation of the clear policy until now of restriction in relation to national insurance contributions.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My noble friend is absolutely right, but we have probably pushed this matter as far as we can tonight. However, I am simply very unhappy about this. It is an unnecessary abatement of the possibility of allowing women who have done the right thing and put their family first at difficult points in their lives to make good their deficit in the NI record, whereas if she were wealthy, well informed, stayed at home and bought a year every year, she would be okay. That is not only a failure to recognise her family responsibility but a failure to recognise the position in which low-income women have always been placed in relation to pensions. We can do better than that. I hope that the Minister might want to see whether he can meet us on this in any way. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 7 withdrawn.