Draft Pensions Dashboards Regulations 2022

David Linden Excerpts

Tuesday 15th November 2022 General Committees

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to welcome the Minister to her new post. I know she will do a great job.

I place on the record the SNP’s support for this statutory instrument and will just develop a couple of thoughts on pensions policy. Previously I was the spokesperson for work and pensions and getting dragged into debates like this does feel a bit like “Hotel California” sometimes. One thing I was quite struck by when I was shadowing that post was the complete lack of pensions literacy that exists not just across the country, but sometimes even in the House of Commons.

The pensions dashboard is incredibly welcome; we all want to see it, notwithstanding some of the shadow Minister’s points about the delivery of the IT. If it is to be successful, however, we need to look, in a twin-track way, at things such as making Pension Wise a lot more freely available to folk. Far too many people in their mid-50s are making decisions on pensions without adequate advice and guidance. Frankly, they are making decisions that are financially disadvantageous to them.

I also want a bit more reform of automatic enrolment. I would like the age for automatic enrolment moved from 22 to 16. I left school at 16 and started working, and it would be right and proper for automatic enrolment to be rolled out to those who start in the labour market straight away. I would also like to see it rolled out from the first pound, rather than an arbitrary threshold, but I appreciate that is not the purpose of today’s debate.

When the Pension Schemes Act 2021 was being taken through Parliament, the SNP expressed some concerns about commercial organisations having access to the pensions dashboards. It is on that basis that we would prefer that MaPS be allowed to run it for the first year before we have the extra commercial interest come into play, just as a way of consumer protection.

The instrument is to be welcomed, notwithstanding some of the wider concerns that I have outlined. I very much hope that my constituents, whether in Fullarton Park or right across the east end of Glasgow, can have both dignity and prosperity in retirement. Pensions dashboards will ultimately allow them to do that and will give them a much more informed view of pensions, which everybody across the country must have.