Savings (Government Contributions) Bill

Jane Ellison Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Monday 17th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Jane Ellison)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

Let me start by reminding the House why the measures contained in the Bill are so important. We want people in this country to have all the tools at their disposal to save money in a way that works for them. We want to make it easier for everyone to build up the savings that they need, to meet their ambitions and to feel secure in their personal finances. We have already set to work to make that the case, putting an end to 17 million people having to pay tax on the interest they receive on their savings and making the biggest ever increase to the individual savings account allowance—to £20,000 from April next year—but we want to do more. The Bill will introduce two new schemes—the lifetime ISA and Help to Save—that will support more people as they save up for the future and provide them with new options to do so.

The lifetime ISA will provide a new option for young people who are looking to save for the long term. We want to make sure that they have a choice in how they save. For some, the pensions system alone is the way forward and we have done a lot to improve it, such as through automatic enrolment and initiatives such as the pensions dashboard. In our consultation last year on pension tax relief, we heard that the pensions system on its own is too inflexible for young people, so the lifetime ISA complements that system while giving people a new option that has been designed with flexibility in mind.

The lifetime ISA is a way of saving up to £4,000 a year. Someone can open an account between the ages of 18 and 40 and carry on saving up to the age of 50. On top of any interest they receive on their savings, they will earn a 25% tax-free bonus from the Government that is paid straight into their account.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)]

Is the Minister at all concerned that this lifetime ISA will introduce an added complexity to the savings market, in particular for young people? Choosing whether to go for a pension or a lifetime ISA could be one of the most important financial decisions in a person’s life. Does she think that there is merit in increasing investment in independent advice and financial literacy so that young people are able to make informed financial decisions?

[Jane Ellison]

On the latter point, I will discuss advice a bit later on, but we are keen that people have access to good advice and good information. On the hon. Gentleman’s first point, this is about complementary products. It is not an either/or choice. The feedback from last year’s consultation was that many younger people did not want to make a binary choice between saving for later in life and saving for a house. This product is simple in its design but gives people that flexibility. As he says, it is important that people get advice, but the welcome that the proposal has received from consumer advocates indicates that people think that it is simple and flexible.

[Jonathan Edwards]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way again. Their incomes mean that many young people are perhaps more hard-pressed than older generations. They do not have the choice of investing in a pension and a lifetime ISA, so they will be deciding which one to go for. The Government need to address that worry with these proposals.

[Jane Ellison]

That interaction has been addressed in the Bill’s impact assessment. There was some concern about the Help to Buy ISA and the interaction with automatic enrolment, but we have seen no evidence of it driving a higher opt-out rate. In fact, the opt-out rate for automatic enrolment is lower than forecast—even on the forecast that was revised down. I note the hon. Gentleman’s concern but I think it has been addressed in the work that we have done.

What is attractive about the lifetime ISA is that people do not have to make an immediate decision about why they are saving this money, which goes back to the hon. Gentleman’s point about people not having to make that decision at an early stage when they cannot see what is ahead.

[Ian Blackford (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (SNP)]

Anyone saving into an auto-enrolment pension will get tax relief up front, but anyone who invests in a lifetime ISA will be making that investment out of taxed income. Does the Minister see the unfairness in that?

[Jane Ellison]

Obviously, we have the Government bonus, which I mentioned, but I go back to the point about this not being an either/or choice; this is about people having potentially complementary products that are for different purposes. This product is not about replacing a pension; it is about giving people a complementary product to help them save for later in life, while keeping open the option of building up money to put towards a house. As we have seen, many hundreds of thousands of people have taken that opportunity with the previous ISA product.

The lifetime ISA can be used by people to get on to the property ladder for the first time and can be put towards a home worth less than £450,000. Through this Bill, from April next year a new, more flexible way to save will be available to people, as one of a number of options.

The Bill also introduces Help to Save, which is about finding a better way to support families who are just about managing but are struggling to build up their savings. All Members will be aware of the research carried out by a number of bodies, particularly the excellent Centre for Social Justice, which estimates that 3 million low-income households have no savings at all. That is not a nice position for anyone to be in: living without having any kind of financial safety net in place and knowing that if they lose their job, they have barely got enough money to pay next month’s rent.

[Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the Minister acknowledge the concern of some that the two-year qualifying period for Help to Save is lengthy for people on very low incomes? Will she also acknowledge the credit union movement’s concern that as a result of the Government response to the consultation on Help to Save—this is how I understand it—it is going to be excluded from offering Help to Save products?

[Jane Ellison]

We have announced that we will be going with a single provider, National Savings & Investments, at the outset, but the primary legislation does not preclude more people providing the product in future; it was essential that we got national coverage for offering this product, but, like all of us in this House, I have huge respect for the credit union movement and we certainly see a role for it going forward, not least in respect of advice and support, a point referred to a moment ago. Perhaps we will tease more of that out in this debate, but I hope that gives the hon. Gentleman some reassurance.

The two-year period comes from looking at the advice and research that has been done by groups that deal with people in this category, and trying to capture the moment at which a savings habit is ingrained. This does not mean people cannot take money out; there is no penalty for taking money out earlier if they want to access it, but the bonus comes at the two-year point, and I will come on to deal with that. This is based on research by groups and charities that work with people in the target market for the product, so there is a robust reasoning for that two-year period.

If someone is trying to put some of that hard-earned money aside in an effort to be more financially secure, we want them to have the full support of their Government as they do so. That is why, through this Bill, we want to introduce the new Help to Save accounts by no later than April 2018. They will be open to any adult who is getting working tax credits or universal credit and working enough to earn the equivalent of at least 16 hours’ pay at the national living wage. That means about 3.5 million people are likely to be eligible.

As has been mentioned, people can save up to £50 a month for two years—we are talking about £1,200 in total—and the Government will give them a 50% bonus. If after those two years someone wants to do that again for the next two years, they will be able to do so. This way to save also offers complete flexibility. What people want to do with the money they have saved and with the Government bonus they have earned is completely up to them, and if they want to take their money out at any time, they can; there will not be any charge or penalty for doing so.

[Jonathan Edwards]

As usual, the House of Commons Library has produced a fantastic briefing on this Bill. In relation to this product, it mentions the conclusions of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which says that only £70 million has been allocated by the Treasury to cover this new savings product in 2020-21, which is nowhere near enough to cover the Government contribution of 50% if everybody who is eligible takes up the product. Has the Treasury got its figures wrong?

[Jane Ellison]

We know that, historically—the hon. Gentleman is right on this—it has been difficult to target financial advice at some of those who are being targeted by this product. Indeed, not many financial products are being targeted at this particular group. However, I can reassure him that we will be doing everything we can—all hon. Members and credit unions have a role to play in this—to promote this product. If the take-up exceeds our expectations, we would be delighted, and we will certainly be working to that effect.

The scheme provides a real incentive for people on low incomes to keep saving what they can. That means that more and more families will have a rainy day fund, so that they can cope with unforeseen events that come their way. I am talking about the sort of events that many of us as constituency Members recognise. They are the ones that drive people into our advice surgeries because something has happened. Research from the debt charity, StepChange, suggests that if families have £1,000 in the bank, they are almost half as likely to fall into problem debt, by which it means being in arrears with at least one bill or credit commitment. This is a savings vehicle that will really help people to build up a pot of money, which can be used for any purpose at all, but which is also there if needed for a rainy day.

In conclusion, this Bill is all about rewarding people who are trying to save for their future and providing them with new options to do so, and it encourages more people to follow their example. Whether we are talking about a young person who wants flexibility in how they save for their future, or someone on a low income who is trying hard to set aside a bit of money each month, we want to ensure that they have a helping hand along the way. Through these two new savings vehicles, that is exactly what the Government will provide. It therefore gives me great pleasure to commend this Bill to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rebecca Long Bailey]

Indeed. Products need to be explained as simply as possible and there needs to be a commitment from the Government that there will be an adequate advertising campaign to avoid any ambiguity about a product. I shall shortly come on to some of my concerns about the specific products to which the Bill refers.

It is important to examine the fact that those who live in more deprived areas or areas that do not have access to a healthy range of high street financial services are often more financially excluded, having limited access to reasonable lending facilities. This in turn leads many to rely on extremely high interest lending facilities such as payday lenders, which are often the only lending facility available. In many cases, that initiates a cycle of debt and sucks any possible savings surplus out of the monthly pay packet. It cannot be lost on the Minster that for some time now food banks have been reporting surges in the number of people in full-time employment who are accessing them. This in itself may suggest that many people have no spare cash to live on day to day, let alone to save.

These problems bring me to the Opposition’s main problem with the Help to Save scheme that the Bill introduces. We wholeheartedly support moves to encourage saving for a rainy day, but in many cases the idea that those on universal credit and working tax credit have a spare £50 at the end of the month is extremely optimistic. People can barely make ends meet, as the Government found out last year when there was a cross-party backlash after they tried to take thousands of pounds from the recipients of much-needed tax credits. The transition to universal credit will arguably leave people in an even worse position.

[Jane Ellison]

rose—

[Rebecca Long Bailey]

I will pre-empt the Minister’s reply that Help to Save is incredibly similar to the saving gateway scheme that was piloted by the previous Labour Government.

[Jane Ellison]

I do not wish to interrupt the hon. Lady, but it is important to make the point that this is about people saving up to £50. It must not be suggested that everyone must save £50. The figure is up to £50, and that can be a very small amount. I would just like to make that clear.

[Rebecca Long Bailey]

I thank the Minister for clarifying that point, but I think that some people would struggle to save even £5 a month, let alone £50.

Let me go back to the point I was trying to make about Labour’s scheme. We did introduce a similar scheme, but it is important to note that we had not spent the previous six years eroding the disposable income of the people whom it targeted. Help to Save might well look good on paper in terms of helping those on low incomes to save, but I must warn the Minister that, given the long-term effect of Government cuts and wider austerity measures, it will not have the desired impact in many cases. The cuts the Government are making to universal credit alone will cost 2.5 million families up to £1,600 a year, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Where will these families find even £1 a month, or up to £50 a month, to put into this savings scheme?

It appears that the Government are not expecting the measure to put rocket boosters, as it were, under savings by those on low incomes. Their costing for the policy is £70 million in 2020-21. Some 3.5 million people will be eligible for the scheme, so if my and the IFS’s calculations are correct, that works out as a Government bonus of £20 per eligible individual in 2020-21.

I was very excited to read the Government’s impact assessment in the past few hours. However, the Minister should note that it arrived at only 1 pm today, and while I am pleased that it arrived at all, she will appreciate that it is really not acceptable to provide such information at the 11th hour if the Government wish to be transparent and capable of being effectively held to account. None the less, I was interested to see that the Government’s expected take-up rate was 500,000 people in the first two years. I will be grateful if she explains the rationale behind that figure. For example, are specific groups more likely to save than others?

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian Blackford]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman that that was the beginning of the end for defined benefit pension schemes in this country. At the time, just about every company in the FTSE 100 had a defined benefit pension scheme. There are hardly any today. My criticism of what the Government are doing with the Bill is that they are once again undermining pension saving. I will come on to the facts of the matter. We cannot get away from this: anybody saving into a pension does so out of pre-tax income. Anybody investing in the LISA will be doing so out of taxed income. That is unfair and unjust. As I mentioned earlier, this is more about a wheeze for the Government to generate taxation income. It is wrong and they should not be doing it without proper incentives for the young people they are targeting.

We would resist any further attempts to undermine pension saving and, specifically, to change the tax status of pension savings. That would be little more than an underhand way of driving up tax receipts—sweet talking workers to invest after-tax income in LISAs when their interests are best served by investing in pensions. We have considerable challenges in ensuring that we take appropriate action and provide the right kind of leadership to encourage pension savings above all else. That is not happening under this Conservative Government. Pension savings are the most tax-efficient arrangement for savers and that is what we ought to prioritise

We also need to revisit the issue of pension tax relief to make it fairer to pension savers. Many commentators and providers, such as Zurich, have suggested that a flat rate of pension tax relief could increase saving among low earners. While ensuring pensions remain an attractive investment for higher earners, it would be inherently fairer. Coupled with auto-enrolment, it would give a powerful boost to the pensions of millions of workers and help the vast majority of people to save more for retirement. It would also end the complexity of the current regime and set tax relief at a sustainable level for the longer term. That kind of approach rather flies in the face of what the Minister has signed off in the impact assessment, which states:

“The government could have done nothing more, relying on existing tax incentives to promote saving among younger people and working families on low income. However, this would have failed to provide the necessary level of support for those who are unable to use existing support to plan and save for their future.”

This is bunkum. Tax relief can be addressed, as I have said, but we must also take into account the fact that a review of auto-enrolment is due in 2017. We can strengthen auto-enrolment to deliver inclusion and encourage pension saving. We want to work with the Government to strengthen auto-enrolment and pension savings, which are the most efficient way for young people to save.

Just today, as we debate the Bill, the Financial Times has published an article highlighting new analysis on pension savings conducted by Aon. The analysis concluded that UK pension savings have a massive deficit of £11 billion a year. A poll of 2,000 pension savers indicates that only 16% of workers are saving enough to maintain their standard of living when they stop work. Why on earth do we want to take attention away, through the Bill the Government are bringing forward, from pension savings? Why are we not focusing on what we should be doing: fixing the problems in the pension industry? That is the priority of those of us on the SNP Benches.

The Aon analysis suggests that members of defined contribution schemes on average need to pay an extra £1,400 a year to achieve a decent retirement income. That is what we should be addressing in this Chamber here tonight. My message to the Government is this: let us all work together to tackle the under-investment in pension savings, to deal with the many challenges we face, and to enhance the attractions of pension savings. That is the priority. Today, too many people are excluded from workplace pensions.

I commend the introduction of auto-enrolment, but recognise that more needs to be done to enhance auto-enrolment and seek to offer affordable solutions to the low-paid, women and the self-employed who, to use the Prime Minister’s term, have been left behind. We need to tackle the issue of those who are currently excluded, such as the 20% of workers who earn less than £10,000 a year. We need to make sure we have an inclusive approach to pension savings that works for all workers.

The average value of conventional ISAs held by those aged between 25 and 34 is £5,186. The annual allowance for the lifetime ISA as proposed is £4,000, so from experience of ISAs this question needs to be addressed: who exactly will benefit? It looks like yet another policy to benefit the rich who can afford to save at such a level and therefore get the full benefits of the Government bonus. So much for the sermon from the Prime Minister about delivering policies for those left behind. It looks to us more like the same old policies for the benefit of the wealthy. When we look at the news today we see that the UK is looking to spend billions of pounds for the City to access the single market—and we should not be surprised. It is yet another case of the poor subsidising the rich.

We need to address the unintended consequences of quantitative easing, which has driven down yields, moderating expectations of future growth for pension funds and substantially increasing the deficit for many defined pension schemes, as the hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Rebecca Long Bailey) mentioned. If we add to that the decline in annuity rates, which is cutting expectations of pensioner income, it means that savers have to increase their contributions to defined contribution schemes. This makes for a challenging environment for pension savers, which needs to be addressed.

On 11 July, the former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the right hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb), said that

“there is a very real systemic issue with DB pension schemes that we need to look at, and my Department will be discussing it further in the months ahead.”—[Official Report, 11 July 2016; Vol. 613, c. 10.]

Since that statement, there has been silence from the Government. Where is the response to the fundamental challenges for today’s pensions and, as some might argue, the crisis in both defined benefit and defined contribution schemes?

We know of the significant factors affecting the BHS and British Steel schemes, and we know that hundreds of other schemes are facing significant deficits. Rather than seeing the Government face up to these challenges and the threat to the many beneficiaries of the schemes, we see a missed opportunity to tackle what ought to be the priorities. When will the Government respond in detail to what the former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions admitted, which we all know to be the case? I give the Minister the opportunity to intervene and tell us what the Government have done since the announcement of the previous Secretary of State. Where is the Government’s response? What do they have to say about the deficit on defined pension schemes? I see Government Members on the Front Bench looking down, but we need answers. What we get from this Government is no action.

[Jane Ellison]

I draw the House’s attention to the fact that we had DWP questions earlier today, and I am sure the hon. Gentleman took the opportunity to put his question then.

[Ian Blackford]

That was a politic answer. I cannot help but remark that I asked the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions a question earlier today, which was enlightening in itself. I asked a question about the WASPI women. I raised a specific point, saying that the SNP had put proposals in front of this Government as we were asked to do. We said that we could deal with the WASPI issue by spending £8 million, which, by the way, the Government could afford to spend because there is a surplus of nearly £30 billion sitting in the national insurance fund. What was the answer we got from the Secretary of State? It was to get the Scottish Government to do that. What he failed to realise is that this House has not given the Scottish Parliament the responsibility for pensions. Why not do that now, then? The Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government would certainly take responsibility for pensions and for pensioners, which this Government are walking away from.

Nothing is being done by this Government. They are like rabbits caught in headlights. That is exactly what we got when the Financial Secretary intervened just now. This is a Government who have no answers to the real issues and the real problems that affect us in the pension landscape. They have been caught doing nothing in the face of systemic risk, which the Government themselves recognise. The Financial Secretary turned around and said, “It is not for me, but for the Department for Work and Pensions”. Well, I am sorry, but she is a Minister of the Government, and this is a Government responsibility. She should be coming to this place with answers.

We also need to recognise that although this Bill will help some savers, it does little to help those who cannot afford to save for later life. Of course, we have had the benefit of the Work and Pensions Select Committee holding an inquiry into the effect of the lifetime ISA on auto-enrolment. Evidence from the Association of British Insurers stated:

“Presented as a choice, no employee will be better off saving into a Lifetime ISA than they would under automatic enrolment. This is due to the loss of employer contributions.”

A recent Standard Life analysis shows that the typical gain from tax breaks and minimum employer top-ups to a qualifying workplace pension for a basic rate taxpayer is between 70% and 85%, compared with the return of 25% from a LISA. That is the con that this Government are trying to inflict on the people of this country. The long-term cost of forgoing annual employer contributions worth 3% of salary by saving into a LISA instead of a workplace pension would be substantial. For a basic rate taxpayer, the impact would be savings of roughly one third less by the age of 60. For example, an employee earning £25,000 per annum and saving 4% of their income each year would see a difference in excess of £53,000. After 42 years, someone saving through a pension scheme would have a pot worth £166,289.99 at a growth rate of 3%. Under a LISA at the same growth rate the value would be £112,646.75. Is the Minister going to defend this?