Pensions Bill

Jim McGovern Excerpts

Monday 17th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Dr Whiteford]

I will not for the moment, because I have been carried off track from the debate about single-tier pensions and am keen to discuss the consequences of the administrative hold-ups, particularly for defined benefit pension schemes.

About 6,000 defined benefit schemes are still operational in the UK, but half of them are now closed to new members. Even given the proposed employer override, there is a pressing need for the regulations to be introduced for consultation at a very early stage. The ACA estimated the time scale required and it has already brought it forward by a year. It says that it will need time to do actuarial work and consult properly with scheme members. Will the Minister outline the time scale for the introduction of the draft regulations, and will he confirm that the Government remain committed to meaningful consultation with the key stakeholders and those who will have to deal with these issues in practice?

The Government argue that the proposals will incentivise saving. Certainly, it will become easier to save for retirement, but it would be more accurate to say that the proposals remove disincentives for savings. We should scrutinise the claim that there will be significantly better incentives to save and temper our expectations.

On the face of it, the single-tier pension should, in theory, encourage people to save for retirement, but I have a few reservations about how that will work in practice, simply because we have had a succession of pension reforms in 1998, 2002 and 2006, all of which have shifted the goalposts for certain cohorts. The reforms have had a cumulative effect, in that they have eroded some people’s confidence in the value of saving for retirement. That has been compounded in the past few years since the financial crash by extremely poor annuity rates and poor terms for draw-down pensions, while older people trying to derive an income from their savings have been hit on all sides by historically low interest rates and the value of their capital being reduced by quantitative easing. People who thought that they were doing the right by saving are seeing little reward for their efforts. From speaking to people of working age, I know that many are looking at their parents’ experiences and thinking twice about how to save for the future and, indeed, whether it is worth doing so.

I hope the Government are right that people will be encouraged to save for retirement, but we must be wary because my sense is that public trust in state pension provision is at a low ebb. That uncertainty will continue to play out with people who are set to retire many years from now, but who are looking at this reform thinking that there is not an awful lot in it for them.

A number of people have talked about the single-tier pension extending the state pension to more women. It is true that most women will be entitled to the state pension in their own right, but the Bill is far from a panacea for the historical problem of women facing an impoverished old age. Even under the new arrangements, women will be less likely than men to receive the full pension. If the main drawbacks of the proposed scheme are that in the long term, the majority of people will have reduced pensions, the fact that the state pension will constitute a lower proportion of people’s income, will be lower as a proportion of average earnings and will be less money in real terms than pensioners have now means that we risk inscribing existing inequalities into the single-tier pension.

The Government hope that a lower state pension will encourage a greater reliance on occupational pensions. Although there is protection in the Bill to allow those who take time out to look after young children or frail elderly relatives to get credit for the single-tier pension, there is no equivalent protection for full-time parents and carers in private pensions. As the value of the state pension erodes and people become more reliant on what they have saved in their occupational pension to maintain a decent standard of living, disproportionate numbers of women are once again likely to be poorer because it is predominantly women who punctuate their working lives with breaks to care for others.

Many women take low-paid jobs so that they can juggle family and work responsibilities. There is also a persistent gender pay gap, so even women who have not taken breaks find that their pay, on average, is lower than that of their male counterparts. That is by no means a new problem, but much of the income inequality between men and women in later life can be attributed to more men having private and occupational pensions. I am far from convinced that the introduction of NEST and auto-enrolment will make much difference to the gender gap in private pension provision or do enough to help women secure a comfortable lifestyle in old age, given that they will be more dependent on what they have saved.

I also have concerns about people who do so-called mini-jobs. Many women with young children work two or three low-paid part-time jobs to support themselves and their family. The Government have encouraged such patterns of work. There is a danger that somebody who works only a few hours a week for a number of employers will miss out on both the threshold for national insurance contributions and auto-enrolment. Again, in the long term, women are likely to be disproportionately affected.

I want to ask the Minister about one last point. Under the current legislation, one way in which full-time stay-at-home parents earn state pension entitlement is by being in receipt of child benefit for a child under 12. When child benefit was a universal benefit, that was a good way of ensuring that mums and dads who took a break from work to care for children did not lose out. Now that child benefit has been withdrawn from higher-income families—often it is higher-income families who have a stay-at-home parent—what mechanism will the Minister use to ensure that a stay-at-home parent in a high-income household does not miss out? With single-tier pensions being unique to the individual and not transferable between spouses, it is more important than ever that such parents are not disadvantaged and are not pushed into total dependence on a high-earning partner.

It is clear that we cannot look at the single-tier pension outwith the context of other changes to the tax and benefits system. The changes will potentially impact on other forms of pension provision. I am aware that many of these matters will be covered in Committee and in regulations that are still to be brought forward. I seek assurance from Ministers that they will heed the concerns of the professional bodies that will have to put the legislation into practice and keep the unresolved issues on their radar.

[Jim McGovern (Dundee West) (Lab)]

rose—

[Dr Whiteford]

I will not give way because I am just finishing.

Every round of pension reform over the past few decades has been touted as the last for a generation. I am not persuaded that what is being proposed today is the final chapter in the pension reform on which we are embarking. I wonder how it will stand the test of time. I fear that in a few years’ time, the goalposts may shift yet again, notwithstanding the reviews that the Government have built into the system. I hope that the Government will look carefully at the equality issues in the Bill and do more to ensure that pensioner poverty for women, as well as men, becomes a thing of the past.