Pension Schemes Bill

Lord German Excerpts

Monday 12th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby]

It is difficult to give a precise answer to the noble Lord’s first question, about maturity. The Treasury is, for good or ill, going to keep its mitts on this process until we are very satisfied that it is working well and is seen to be in a stable and successful state.

As for the single session, noble Lords will be aware that people will be able to access the service either online, on the phone or in person. The hope is that by giving people all the financial information that they require, by encouraging them, in the case of pension providers, and by explaining to people, before they turn up to their session, the kind of information that we are looking for, it will be possible to give adequate guidance in one session. We accept that that will not be enough for some people; they will have forgotten something or a thought will occur to them once they have left. We hope that of those cases, which we hope will be a small minority, a majority will be able to get an adequate response to a specific query by going to the website.

We accept, however, that for some people that will not be the case, and that in a minority of cases some people will need to go back, either to make a subsequent phone call or to have a subsequent meeting. However, we are working very hard to minimise that necessity—because, obviously, getting things right first time will be in everyone’s interest.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, perhaps I could follow the point that my noble friend and the noble Lord opposite have just raised in respect of the same document. Box 2.A on FCA standards requires the people delivering the service to have a range of skills, which are numbered i to viii. I shall refer to a report last week in a newspaper that prints on pink paper, in which it was trying to seek from Citizens Advice and the Pensions Advisory Service the qualities of the people that they would employ. The report in the Financial Times that I am quoting from says:

“Citizens Advice said details of where the”,

agents and case workers,

“would be deployed throughout its … bureaux … were still being finalised. However, it conceded that consumers could be required to make a further appointment if their questions could not be answered during their … guidance sessions”.

That raises two separate issues: one is the quality and skills of the people who are delivering the guidance service, and the other is whether Citizens Advice is on side with the idea of delivering it in one go. The comment seems to suggest that its people may not have answers to the questions that are being raised by those people seeking guidance in their first interview. I wonder whether the range of flexibility on the two is at all appropriate.

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, we are keen to make sure that by the time people have been through the guidance process, they are able to make the best decisions for themselves. As I say, we hope that that will be possible in the vast bulk of cases first time around.

I think that what will happen in giving guidance in this area, as happens elsewhere, is that there will be a number of very special cases, but the vast bulk of people will have the same issues as others. The CAB, which after all has to give advice on the whole benefits system, which if anything is even more complicated than the pensions system, has a proven track record of developing the skills of people, and is very good at this—while this is, of course, what the Pensions Advisory Service does.

So we are confident that there are going to be well qualified people. We are building flexibility into the system—partly by having three ways of accessing it and partly, as I say, by, in exceptional circumstances or in a minority of circumstances, allowing people to go back—and we hope we are going to make sure that at the end of the day people will all have the degree of guidance that they need, relevant to their needs, to enable them to make well informed decisions.