Oral Answers to Questions

David Mowat Excerpts

Monday 18th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Esther McVey]

Obviously the Opposition like to rewrite history. The 40% increase in youth unemployment that we saw over their years in office was shocking, particularly given that it was during a boom period. We are dealing with the issue most practically. The Youth Contract has been, is and will be a huge success, with wage contracts increasing from a slow start of 1,000 a month to 4,000-plus a month.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

7. What costs will be included in his proposed cap on pension charges.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb)]

As my hon. Friend knows, we are consulting on whether there should be cap on charges in workplace pensions and, if so, what costs it should cover. Without pre-empting the consultation, he can be assured that our presumption would be in favour of a broad definition of charges for those purposes.

[David Mowat]

I thank the pensions Minister for that answer and congratulate him on his consultation on introducing a cap that is 50% of the level of the cap for stakeholder pensions introduced when the Opposition were in government. That is a step forward. A further step forward across the whole industry would be to have better comparability and transparency of charges generally. We have acted to do that for energy companies by simplifying charge structures. Will we consider doing that for pensions?

[Steve Webb]

I thank my hon. Friend for being the only Member who managed to get a pensions question on today’s Order Paper. [Interruption.] I will make the most of it. He is quite right that the Office of Fair Trading identified 18 different sorts of charges, which are often baffling and hidden. One of its recommendations was that the committees that oversee pensions should be given transparent information about charges, and that is a recommendation we will be looking to take forward.