Pensions Bill

Debate between Caroline Lucas and Richard Graham

Tuesday 29th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Richard Graham]

That is an interesting point. The answer is yes, but they are not in the hundreds. They come in two types. One type number those who are either still working there and are concerned about possible changes to the defined benefit scheme and exactly the issue I have just gone through with the Minister. I hope that that will be reassuring to the hon. Lady’s constituents as well as to mine.

The second type of person who has been in touch relates to the third constituency query I was going to raise: those members who are covered by the Electricity (Protected Persons) (England and Wales) Pension Regulations 1990. I see the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Katy Clark) nodding and suspect that she has been contacted by people in a similar situation. The issue is that their pensions might be affected by changes to their pension schemes to reflect these higher national insurance costs. I understand that the Government have still not responded to their own consultation on whether to exempt protected persons from these changes. The Minister might care to comment on that later. It might be something that the Treasury is involved in, alongside the Department for Work and Pensions, but I think that it would be right to express concern on behalf of some of the pensioners involved. However, I understand that there is an argument that both existing pensioners and current members of a pension scheme should be treated with consistency on that. I raise the issue so that the Minister can respond. Those were the three queries on bereavement, change of occupational schemes—which has been answered—and the protected persons scheme.

In conclusion, what the Government are proposing in the Pensions Bill is important and will make a difference. The changes will enable people to save and that saving will pay. The technical details, which the Minister covered earlier, are important for smoothing out some of the small but niggly details that will affect our constituents in due course.

At the risk of repeating myself, I am disappointed by the approach taken by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East. For him and his party to fall back on a slogan of “consultation not action” really was disappointing; after 86 minutes we would have hoped for a great deal more clarity on his precise proposals. What exactly does he intend to do on charges? In the absence of such clarity, I hope that he and Members from all parties will make substantive contributions to the consultation so that we can agree on the charges, make changes to the annuity details and say with pride to all our constituents that this Pensions Bill will make a difference to all our lives in retirement.

[Caroline Lucas]

I have tabled new clause 12 and amendments 54 and 55 to highlight the need for the Department for Work and Pensions to address the systemic risks posed by climate change and natural resource depletion to pension schemes as a whole, and to suggest some positive solutions.

The Minister has already mentioned the report launched today as part of the new green light campaign by ShareAction, in partnership with the trade unions and environmental groups, which highlights the urgent need for reforms to the pension industry to ensure that it takes greater account of climate and environmental risks. I am glad that the Minister was able to be present to launch it.

Obviously, pension funds use the money paid into them every month to make investments in shares of companies, bonds, properties and other assets, which makes them enormously powerful players in shaping the economy, especially as they have significant investments in fossil fuel companies. However, if we want to keep climate change below dangerous levels, we need pension funds to fund and support a low-carbon economy by, for example, investing in clean technologies and low-carbon infrastructure projects. Moreover, today’s report shows that the UK pension funds have £3 trillion at risk from so-called unusable fossil fuel investments—fossil fuels which, if we are serious about keeping to our climate change commitments, we simply cannot afford to burn. That is a huge threat to the incomes of future pensioners.

In the UK an increasing number of voices are speaking out about the need for pension funds and others to divest themselves of fossil fuel assets. Operation Noah has launched “Bright Now”, a church divestment campaign whose first success came early this month when Quakers in Britain announced that they will disinvest from companies engaged in extracting fossil fuels, which made them the first UK Christian denomination to do so.

UK university students are increasingly engaged in divestment campaigns, as evidenced by the work undertaken by People & Planet. To date, there are 19 active divestment campaigns across the UK, including universities with large endowments: Cambridge, Oxford and Edinburgh.

Looking further afield, 70 of the largest pension funds in the US and the world issued a statement last week setting out their view that major fossil fuel companies may not be as profitable in the future, precisely because of efforts to limit climate change. They are asking for details on how the firms will manage a long-term shift to cleaner energy sources.

Here at Westminster, the recent Business, Innovation and Skills Committee report on the Kay review of the UK equity market and long-term decision making, which was produced earlier this year, recommended that the stewardship code should do more to address environmental, social and governance factors and systemic financial risks, as well as calling for more robust reporting on conflicts of interest.

I agree with the Minister’s comments this morning about the need for a fiduciary duty to consider climate and environmental risks to our pension system and for this to be in the mainstream, first, because that is important to reduce the risks to pension holders themselves, and secondly, in order to harness the huge contribution that pension funds can make to the massive investment that we need in clean energy infrastructure. New clause 12 and amendments 54 and 55 make modest proposals of ways in which the Department could make that happen.

New clause 12 would require the Secretary of State to

“commission an independent review of the implications of climate change and natural resource constraints for the sustainability of private pensions.”

The review should

“consider the implications for long-term investment outcomes for members of work-based pension schemes of potential…systemic risks posed by high levels of exposure to fossil fuels and other carbon-intensive assets…economic and physical impacts of climate change under various climate mitigation scenarios; and…constraints on the availability of non-renewable resources”,

such as food, land and water resources.

That proposal builds on a landmark paper by the actuarial profession that modelled the implication of resource constraints for private pensions and found that, even in the best-case scenario, pension outcomes are likely to be worse than predicted because the industry is not factoring in risks associated with those constraints on food, water and land. In the worst-case scenario, savers in the model of a defined-contribution pension scheme were only half as well off, while the defined-benefit pension scheme became insolvent. The new clause also builds on work by Carbon Tracker on unburnable carbon, which shows that if the aim is to secure long-term returns, divesting from fossil fuel assets would be a pretty sensible thing to do.

Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

Debate between Caroline Lucas and Richard Graham

Monday 21st January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas]

I think the answer is probably both of the above. Recently, the RPI has been higher. I would have been happy to look at an amendment—no such amendment exists, unfortunately—that combined the work that the hon. Gentleman’s party has been doing on earnings with my effort to get a link back to the RPI and prices. We should look at whichever is the most generous. I stuck to the RPI link in my amendment because I wanted it to be realistic enough to get more support across the House. I fear that I might have been a little over-ambitious.

It worries me that instead of seeking to restore the link to prices, the official Opposition have not sought to protect people who are seeking work, but appear to have picked out one or two benefits, such as employment and support allowance and maternity benefit, for proper protection. They have ignored, for example, those on jobseeker’s allowance, as long as some sort of workfare system is brought in for people who have been looking for work for two years. Do the Opposition think that it is okay for the link to be broken for JSA recipients in the meantime? The Opposition amendments offer an improvement to a nasty Bill, and for that I support them, but I believe they expose a certain cowardice in not confronting the stereotypes and myths that the Government continue to perpetrate. Why are the Opposition not standing up for unemployed people and restoring the link to RPI? I do not accept that they could not consider that principle today, and it is disappointing that they will not. A link to prices is an absolute minimum, a safety net red line.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady confirm that she is advocating a return to a link between all benefits and the retail prices index from now on? In 2012-13, benefits went up by 5.3% and the Office for National Statistics labour statistics show that the pay of all those in work went up on average by 2.1%. What impact does the hon. Lady think that would have over a few years on the morale of people in work? Would it act as an incentive to work, or to retreat back to benefits as fast as possible?

[Caroline Lucas]

The hon. Gentleman’s intervention shows the different beliefs that he and I have about the great British public. I do not believe that most people have to be pushed into work by cruel incentives; I believe that the vast majority want to work, contribute and feel part of a wider society. That is where he and I differ.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Graham]

I am with the hon. Lady; I do believe that most people want to work. I am asking her about the impact it will have if somebody off work continually gets double, if not more, the increase that working people get. Surely she understands that there is a link.

[Caroline Lucas]

The proposition is spurious. First, it happens very rarely; secondly, we ought to look at the actual amounts of money involved. The Government talk glibly about percentages, but the percentage of something very small is still very small. The amounts that we are talking about do not make that much difference. What does make a difference is social solidarity and the sense of people really being in it together. If this Government cared more about making that a reality than just having the rhetoric, we might stand a chance of securing a happier and better-off society.

[Richard Graham]

rose—

[Caroline Lucas]

I should like to make some progress because I have let the hon. Gentleman in twice.