Pensions Bill [HL] Debate
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Lord McKenzie of Luton
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Pensions Bill [HL]
Lord McKenzie of Luton Excerpts(13 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, I speak to Amendments 20 and 21 in this group, which concern the trigger. Their thrust is not dissimilar to that of the amendment moved by my noble friend, although they are perhaps less ambitious. We will shortly discuss changes to or, indeed, the deletion of the trigger, but these amendments are predicated on the trigger remaining at its current level.
Amendment 21 would give an opportunity for jobholders to bring to the attention of employers the fact that by including earnings from other employments the trigger is reached or exceeded. Therefore, if the other conditions for auto-enrolment were present, the employer would have a duty to act accordingly. I underline how modest this provision is, as it is effectively an alternative to opting in. The employer would have no auto-enrolment duty unless, among other things, the employee had qualifying earnings in respect of that particular employment. It would be of advantage only where, in respect of any particular employer, the trigger had not been reached but qualifying earnings with that employer had. As has been expressed—my noble friend Lady Drake will develop this when we discuss a subsequent group of amendments—we have concerns about the potential widening gap between the trigger and the start of the band of qualifying earnings. If that is right, being able to access contributions on that band, even though the trigger has not been met in respect of any employment, becomes more important.
Like the amendment moved by my noble friend, this amendment is in part about putting down a marker for the ambition that, at some stage in the future, the various thresholds—the trigger and the qualifying earnings—might be amalgamated with payments allocated among two or more employers, but this amendment does not seek that. However, we would be interested in the Minister’s view on the extent to which HMRC might routinely have a role in identifying where the trigger is reached for multiple earnings. In a sense, it is like the allocation of personal allowances across various notices of coding. Could that be done on a more systematic basis? The noble Lord’s work on the universal credit seems predicated on amalgamating on a real-time basis income from a range of sources, so we wonder whether there is a read-across to auto-enrolment. If there were, it would address the inertia issue that is present in the formulation of this amendment and the equivalent opt-in route.
The amendment in the name of my noble friend Lady Hollis is, as I said, pretty much on the same page, although I understand that it is not necessary for the earnings trigger to be reached for a jobholder to opt in. The right exists if the employee has qualifying earnings, but it would not allow the employee to specify a particular scheme, be it NEST or any other scheme. I think that that would be the employer’s choice, although the Minister may be able to enlarge on that. By and large, however, we are seeking to achieve the same thing. The prize for and the challenge to the Minister is to see, consistent with confidentiality of information, whether the systems that enable some more automatic notifications in some circumstances can be deployed where the trigger is in aggregate reached but not in any one employment.
Lord Freud
My Lords, on Tuesday we discussed the possible aggregation of many jobs for credit towards the basic state pension. I admit to being indebted to the ever persuasive arguments of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, about the effect of portfolios of many jobs, especially in rural communities, and her concern that as many low earners as possible should be able to qualify for auto-enrolment and an employer contribution.
I also note the wise cautions of the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, on Tuesday about the potential effect on employers—where aggregation is mooted—and on the labour market. As I said on Tuesday, I am sympathetic to the principle of aggregation for basic state pension purposes. I am cautious but optimistic that this could be possible in the new world of the universal credit. This is because, if Government systems can track information for universal credit, it may not be a huge leap from there to having national insurance contributions or making credits on a state pension record. However, we are now about to discuss a somewhat different issue—that of the aggregation of earnings from many jobs in relation to auto-enrolment into workplace pensions. I need to emphasise again that it is important to encourage part-time jobs and to look for a way of aggregation. However, there are greater barriers in this area than there are in the area of the state pension in terms of aggregation. That it is more complicated was stated by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, in her speech.
The main and unique barrier is a need not only to aggregate earnings across employers but also to apportion pension contributions between those different employers. This is quite a problem in terms of employer burden cost and complexity, which we would need to find a way to resolve. The automatic enrolment duty falls on each employer for the people they employ. There is no sharing of the duty between employers. If a person has two jobs, each of their employers is responsible for enrolling them as the legislation is presently set up. Workers who do not earn enough to qualify for automatic enrolment clearly may opt in. Those who have the qualifying earnings have the right to employer contributions, which is ground we went over just now.
The first amendment raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, seeks to increase voluntary pensions saving for people who do not earn enough to be automatically enrolled by enabling the aggregation of the many jobs and any earnings from self-employment for a person who also works on their own account. This would allow people who earn under the automatic enrolment earnings trigger, and opt in, to have their earnings for more than one job taken into account for calculating pension contributions. This looks like a straightforward proposal. However, there are considerable practical problems that would, in practice, increase employer administration burden.
Let me turn to the two amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, and the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, which seek to enable aggregation by solving one of these practical difficulties about information sharing between employers. These amendments enable earnings from separate jobs for separate employers to be added together where the person can demonstrate to the employer that they have another job with other earnings in that week or month and that they are therefore entitled to be auto-enrolled. This is a very neat amendment that shifts the burden of proof from the employer. However, it is not quite as modest as the noble Lord suggested because it does not entirely solve the issue of the employer administration burden.
It is not immediately obvious how the employer contribution could be easily calculated or divided up. No mechanism currently exists to do that. Would multi-employers share the cost of the employer contribution? If so, how would that be done? Which employer takes responsibility for paying contributions to the pension scheme? If they share the cost, how would one employer recover the cost from the other employer? If they do not share the cost, is it fair that one employer bears the entire cost and the other none of it? Overall, we cannot see how it could be done without placing a significant and unfair burden on employers. I sympathise with the intention behind these amendments in terms of those with multiple jobs, and it is certainly an issue to keep an eye on as we go forward. It clearly—and noble Lords all acknowledge this—is not feasible with our present technology; but even if it became feasible, which it very well may, moving the burden of proof on to the worker is not the way to do it.
Standing back just a little, our first priority at this point must be to ensure that employers understand, and are able successfully to implement, their duties under automatic enrolment. That is the priority. This is not the right point to contemplate introducing significant changes to those duties, and I think noble Lords today recognise that. Introducing new and significant burdens would disrupt that process. However, noble Lords have successfully put down a marker for 2017. On that basis, we do not accept the amendment and invite noble Lords to withdraw it.
Lord Boswell of Aynho
Well, they are, and it is the Conservative Party agents’ superannuation scheme, but I promise not to detain the Committee on that. I hope I would have given the same attention to anyone else with whom I was in a trustee relationship.
May I just make two points? I fully understand that the Minister was kind enough to quote my slight reservation in our earlier exchanges on related matters. The first is a note of concern: it would certainly be unfortunate if one employer were somehow to be delinquent because of the failure of another employer to declare, which had created excess over the qualifying limit. I just make that point; I am sure my noble friend will have it in mind.
The second point is intended to be more positive and it might help to inform trains of thought. One always has to be careful about these sorts of things, not least for data protection reasons. I happened yesterday to have gone to a completely unrelated meeting in this building about occupational health, which is an interest of mine. We were looking at the new construction workers’ smart card scheme. Of course, once there is something that is able to identify the individual with known characteristics—dates of birth, for example, or presumably one could incorporate an NI number—and that is portable, it is possible for that to be tendered, or even required to be tendered, through various places of work. It might be possible to aggregate electronically in that way. I just offer that to my noble friend as a way forward. I am pleased to see the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, also nodding; at least it is a thought. We always have to be careful with these things, because there will be some people on manual, some people who do not understand and minority interests and industries. But if we can possibly start working toward some sensible protocols people could use, it would be generally beneficial.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
I wonder whether the Minister would allow me to intervene, because he challenged the description I gave of my amendment as being modest. He may have misunderstood the intent of part of it. All it was seeking to do initially was to say that if someone had qualifying earnings, with a particular employer, but not earnings that reached the trigger, and if there were a process of the employer being made aware that the trigger had been reached, the employer would automatically enrol and be responsible for contributions in respect of the earnings in that employment between the start of the qualifying earnings band and whatever that band reached. That would in a sense be stand alone for an employer. That gives exactly the same result as employees now have in being able to opt in, because if you have earnings above the threshold, but not at the trigger, you can simply opt in and get the employer contribution.
Along the way, the hope would be that, rather than relying on the activity of the employee—because we are always trying to deal with the inertia problem—you could somehow make it more automatic. It would be automatic, though, only in the sense of the employer being aware that the trigger had been reached. It would not require any aggregation of earnings by any employer. I instance how HMRC deals with notices of coding. If people have two or more jobs, on one basis or another the personal allowance is divvied up across their notices of coding—don’t ask me how. In a sense, an employer would be aware that other earnings may be involved. That sort of process could be a trigger for automatically alerting the employer that the trigger had been reached and simply then requiring them to deal with auto-enrolment on the earnings that the employee is being paid by that employer. My amendment would do no more than that.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, my noble friend Lady Turner is not here but as my amendments, which are grouped with this, would effectively achieve the same thing, perhaps the Committee might allow me to formally move on her behalf, if that is in order. I will also speak to Amendment 19 in this group, which should strictly have had attached to it a current year date of 2010-11, because without that it obviously has other ramifications. All these amendments are, to all intents and purposes, identical, although they have to be considered in the context of the review provisions of Clause 8, which my noble friend Lady Drake will deal with shortly. These amendments would reduce the trigger to the current primary threshold for national insurance purposes, so effectively this equates the trigger with the starting point of qualifying earnings. We consider this the right place to be.
The pensions commission originally recommended that individuals would be automatically enrolled when they had earned, in 2006-07 terms, £5,035, which was the national insurance primary threshold at that time. However, it also recommended that this threshold should be uprated by earnings. Indeed, that is what the legislation said. I remember that when we were debating the Bill, we as a Government tried to get a little bit of wriggle room on that uprating, and a combination of Liberal Democrats and Conservatives, led by the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, pressed an amendment that locked us into what the legislation currently says. They were the early actions of the coalition and I still bear the scars.
One of the lessons learnt is that it is better to insert a figure in the legislation and have rules for reviewing it rather than link the threshold to a particular measure—be it the personal allowance for income tax or the primary threshold for national insurance purposes—the reason being that it can move for policy reasons in a way that does not have any particular regard to the impact on the auto-enrolment analysis. We know that the coalition Government have an ambition to move the personal tax allowance to £10,000. Should a trigger threshold or a qualifying earnings threshold be tied to that, it would have devastating consequences for auto-enrolment. It would leave 1.4 million people, three-quarters of them women, outside auto-enrolment.
Changes to national insurance—part of the coalition Government’s approach to tackling the deficit—mean that the primary threshold increases from April this year, as does the rate, to £7,200, nearly closing the gap with the personal allowance. There have, from time to time, been ambitions to align the personal allowance with the primary threshold. We hold to the view that realigning the start of qualifying earnings with the current primary threshold level, with clear caps on its uprating, is the right place to be. This holds good to the pensions commission analysis that the crucial issue was the level of replacement income in retirement—a point to which the noble Lord referred a moment ago.
In our view, the case for the trigger at £7,475 is not made. On the basis of the Johnson report, it would exclude some 600,000 people from auto-enrolment and would save only some £3 million a year in administration costs for employers. Indeed, one wonders whether it would have some impact on opt-in arrangements, which would be likely to be more costly.
This takes us back to the question of whether people on low earnings benefit from savings, although I believe that the Johnson report dealt with that very clearly. It made the point that earnings are highly dynamic and that relatively few people have low earnings throughout their lives. Also, most of those on low earnings within family units have a working partner with significant earnings and so should benefit from pension savings. There is also the risk of missing out on employer contributions and the favourable interaction with tax credits. Perhaps the noble Lord would comment on that favourable interaction in relation to universal credit.
Given the acceptance of the appropriateness of savings from the start of a band of qualifying earnings, which we can agree for the current year, the argument advanced for a higher trigger is a bit thin. Essentially, it is that it will reduce the number of small pots of pension savings—that is, those that would accrue to people earning between approximately £5,700 and £7,300—because that creates a cliff edge and does not necessarily equate with consistency of savings. In any event, NEST is geared up to deal with just that sort of situation. Therefore, the introduction of a trigger that is different from the start of the qualifying earnings band is something that we strongly oppose.
Lord Freud
She would make an argument to that effect, no doubt. However, how that would happen and its timing would be very sensitive, so it is simply not appropriate at this stage to make any presumption which would drive one into this very uncertain territory.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to the debate on these amendments. I had intended to say at the start of these deliberations on auto-enrolment, but forgot to do so, that we obviously have a number of challenges in some areas. However, we should make it absolutely clear, as I hope we did at Second Reading, that we thoroughly support the Government’s decision to proceed with auto-enrolment and with NEST. Those are hugely important developments to the pensions landscape. Whatever our challenges might be now, they need to be seen in the context of our fundamental support on that issue.
The debate has almost conflated two issues: the it-pays-to-save issue, which the noble Lords, Lord Stoneham and Lord Boswell, touched on, and the practical issues around having small pots, which the Minister relied on and to which the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, referred. We need to unpick those. Perhaps I may refer noble Lords to the Johnson report in relation to the “it pays to save” argument. Page 30 states:
“This analysis raises significant questions about the validity of an annual earnings threshold of £5,035. Even at earnings substantially above this level, individuals see very high replacement rates from the State. Based on this analysis alone, we might easily argue that an earnings threshold of over £10,000 would be more appropriate to encourage the right individuals (those who actually need to save) to begin saving into a workplace pension. There are two key reasons to question such a conclusion. Firstly, earnings are not static. For many, earnings could change dramatically over their lifetime. For these people, saving for a pension whilst on relatively low income could be beneficial as it improves persistency of saving and increases income in retirement. Secondly”—
this point has already been made—
“many individuals live in a family unit. It is the circumstances of the wider family that are more important in determining whether it is appropriate for a particular individual to save”.
So on the “it pays to save” argument, the report seems to support the contention that an earnings band starting at the current primary threshold is the right place to be. It is in relation to the practicalities that the report argues the trigger. Separating the earnings threshold and the manner in which contributions are paid will help to reduce the number of small pots of pension savings, which are disproportionately costly. The smallest contribution going into a pension pot will be £130 a year.
The Minister is right: of course you can always argue that someone can opt in, but the whole purpose of auto-enrolment is to challenge the inertia which has undermined our pension system for decades; it does not really help with that pot. In any event, it picks up the point about persistency of savings. There might be small pots to start with but if people save persistently, even in respect of low income for a period, that builds up a pot which might not be insignificant. However, using arguments about practicalities and small pots seems potentially to punish the wrong people, as we are saying that some 600,000 people are not going to benefit from auto-enrolment because we do not want to handle small pots. NEST was created, in part at least, to handle that very issue. There are questions about the profitability of the pension sector and pension providers, and there is a balance to be struck in all of that.
Therefore, I very much hang on to the point that the argument for the trigger seems to be based overwhelmingly on the question of the practicalities of dealing with small pots. It does not fully address “pays to save” and the question of whom we should be encouraging to save.
Lord Freud
Perhaps I may respond to the noble Lord on that and make absolutely clear the arguments that we will be taking from the Johnson review. It said that you needed to look at three things: replacement rates, earnings dynamics, and family make-up and characteristics. Looking at all three of those, on balance the recommendation was for a higher threshold of roughly £7,400, the reason being that it got the right people saving. That must be the core argument, along with the practical argument relating to costs. It is very expensive to manage small pots. The economics of running a NEST operation, let alone other operations, where it is important to get costs down, is an important secondary consideration. However, the primary one is to get the right people saving. After all, this is, as I have said previously, the biggest experiment in asymmetric paternalism. Let us get it right first and fine-tune it later.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, we could go on for ever on this, although it may not be hugely productive to do so for much longer. Of course we accept that these recommendations come from the report, and there are obviously recommendations in the report which, thankfully, the Government did not pursue. However, I would hang on to the point about conflating two issues—“it pays to save” and the question of whom we should be encouraging to save in order to achieve good replacement income in retirement. As the noble Lord acknowledged earlier, the Turner commission—I should call it the pensions commission out of deference to my noble friend, who spent such a large part of her life contributing to that—still holds: a 45 per cent replacement rate, with 30 per cent coming from the state and 15 per cent coming from auto-enrolment. That band of earnings is encouraging people to save. Therefore, that seems to deal with replacement rates and “it pays to save”.
The other issue, which I accept comes from the report about the trigger, is the practical one of dealing with small pots. It is a question of where you make the judgment. We would say that excluding people from the opportunity of auto-enrolment simply because they are below that trigger, even though they are within the band of earnings that the report acknowledges should be building pension pots, is not the right thing to do. Doubtless we will return to this on Report. In the interim, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, I will also speak to Amendment 24. These amendments could be degrouped because they are alternatives. The fact that they are grouped together may have given rise to some confusion. Both these amendments touch on proposals for postponement—effectively, the opportunity to defer automatic enrolment for a worker for up to three months.
As the Johnson report recites, there have been strong and consistent calls to introduce waiting periods from employers and from many in the pensions industry. Employer groups have supported the introduction of waiting periods, principally to reduce the administrative cost of enrolling people who are with the employer only for a short period of time and to allow probationary periods to pass. They believe that waiting periods will help employers to adjust to the additional cost of the employer duties and will minimise the need for refunds. The costs associated with deferral or waiting periods have been analysed by the Johnson report and the key features are that a three-month period will involve about 500,000 fewer people being automatically enrolled. Given that, on average, people have 11 different labour-market interactions during their lifetime, that would mean individuals accumulating something like three years’ less savings than would otherwise be the case. Someone whose work pattern is a perpetual cycle of short-term, say, seasonal work could miss out to a much greater extent.
The amendments do two things. Amendment 23 just tests and basically asks why, if there is to be a waiting period, there is the magic period of three months. Why would one month not be sufficient? Perhaps more substantially, Amendment 24 is predicated on the assumption that the three-month waiting period will stay broadly in place, but it seeks to limit the time period, where the starting date of the three choices is the staging date—the date where an employer first comes into the system or where, say, a worker becomes a jobholder on reaching the age of 22. If the fundamental rationale for a waiting period is not to have to auto-enrol somebody who will leave within three months, why defer for longer than three months from when the individual is first employed? Someone reaching the age of 22 may have been employed already for three months, three years or even longer, so why defer in those circumstances? Similarly, at the staging date most employees will have been employed already for three months, and many maybe for years. I do not understand, if the fundamental rationale is to deal with the issues of short-term workers who leave and are likely to opt out, why we would operate a deferment date for people who have been around potentially for a long time.
One effect of Clause 6 seems to be to replace the existing Section 4 of the 2008 Act. From recollection, this was designed to allow some deferral for DC schemes that contributed well in excess of the minimum. This, in a sense, was a reward for being a good scheme. That seems to have disappeared and we have this blanket opportunity for deferral for everyone, whether they are paying at the minimum or are doing better than that. It would be interesting to hear an explanation as to why that particular provision, which was designed to be an incentive, is effectively removed by this Bill. I beg to move.
Lord Freud
A waiting period will also allow employers to align automatic enrolment processes with their existing processes and avoid part-period calculations of contributions. In addition, it will allow them to stagger auto-enrolment of large workforces. An employer will be able to apply a waiting period to all employees at their staging date. It will also be possible for an employer to apply a waiting period when a new employee joins the workforce or from the date when an employee becomes an eligible jobholder—for example, when they turn 22.
It is important to note that an employer will be allowed to apply a waiting period only if he gives the worker information about the waiting period within a certain deadline. This will ensure that workers are informed of their right to opt into pension saving during the waiting period. It is only right and fair that those who wish to start saving for retirement earlier are not prevented from doing so.
The waiting period is intended to ease the administrative burden and has been widely welcomed by employers. However, it means that, for those individuals who have frequent job changes, there could be a significant impact on their overall pension savings. This is particularly so, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, pointed out, if they are subject to a waiting period in every post. Allowing individuals to opt in during the waiting period will address this imbalance so that no one is denied the opportunity to save. As I said, if auto-enrolment has the impact that it should have, the psychology of saving should change for many people.
Noble Lords will be pleased to hear that much of the detail is on the face of the Bill. We propose taking regulation-making powers in just two areas. First, we will specify in regulations how quickly the employer must give notice to the individual about the waiting period. Secondly, we will set out what information that notice must contain and any other accompanying information that the employer must provide. For example, workers will need to be provided with information about the right to opt in during the waiting period. It is important that we have the flexibility to set the period and to provide for additional accompanying information in regulations once we have had an in-depth consultation with our stakeholders.
As I said, a key aim of the reforms is to encourage more people to start saving for retirement. However, at the same time, we have been mindful of the costs for employers of implementing the reforms. We believe that a three-month waiting period provides the correct balance between easing employer burden and maximising individuals’ savings. This amendment introduces a variable length of waiting period depending on the circumstances. There are two main issues with such an approach. First, introducing a one-month waiting period for existing employees would remove some of the flexibility afforded to employers through waiting periods; for example, they would not be able to stagger automatic enrolment of large workforces. Secondly, we are keen to ensure that the introduction of waiting periods does not make the automatic enrolment process more complicated. We believe that a simple process is key to employers understanding and preserving their support. A two-tier waiting policy would add complexity and would be difficult for employers to understand or use. It would add to the burden on employers, which is not the intention of waiting periods.
Waiting periods were designed with employers in mind and have been welcomed. We believe that they will provide a real easement for employers, as well as ensuring that individuals’ savings are protected. I urge the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, to withdraw the amendment.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, of course I intend to withdraw the amendment. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, and my noble friend Lady Hollis for their participation. The noble Lord, Lord Boswell, made an interesting point about recyclable employees effectively coming back in one form or another. My noble friend Lady Hollis emphasised the issue of what this could mean in terms of savings for people who are perpetually caught up in this deferral. We accept the point about some flexibility on the alignment of processes. This does not seem unreasonable. I also acknowledge that there may be some amelioration of the lost savings years; if people are perpetually caught up in this, opting in may catch on. However, we know how damaging inertia around pensions has been, so that could not be assured.
With respect to the noble Lord, I do not think that he dealt with the point about the original provision in this clause, which I understood was there to be an incentive for good provision and to give people some extra leeway in their easement. This seems to have gone and, in effect, been replaced by a sort of blanket easement. Although I will not convince the Minister, I also hang on to my point that, if the fundamental easement for employers—and I understand that they would welcome this—is that it helps them with the problem and administrative costs of the coming and going of short-term employees, and if, as I accept, a three-month waiting period is needed to address that, why on earth should it be applied to somebody who has been employed for months or years who reaches the age of 22 and becomes a jobholder? There is no logic to the position. The employer will know the track record of that individual, yet they are being treated exactly the same as somebody who has just walked through the door. If the proposition is that you need a waiting period to deal with short-term employees, I still do not understand why you need to have it for people who have been employed for many years and who simply, by virtue of their age, become a jobholder.
“4A Annual report on implementation and monitoring of section 4
(1) The Secretary of State must publish an annual report about the implementation and monitoring of the postponement provisions of section 4 and must lay a copy of this report before parliament.
(2) The report required under subsection (1) must, in particular, include—
(a) the numbers and categories of jobholders receiving notices that their automatic enrolment is deferred; and(b) the numbers of such jobholders who in respect of that employment do not become automatically enrolled.”
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, this amendment is very straightforward and simply seeks the publication of an annual monitoring report concerning the deferral provisions provided for in Clause 4. Noble Lords will have gathered from our earlier discussion that we have considerable concerns over these provisions and how they will be applied in practice, and whether their application will deter individuals from auto-enrolment. We are not prescriptive about the detail of the report or its timing but we need to be reassured that any provisions are working fairly. As I understand it, there is no requirement for all employees to be treated in the same manner under these provisions and therefore we need information about how this is working in practice. So the intent of this amendment is clear. There needs to be some process of reporting so that we can understand in practice how these provisions are working. I beg to move.
Lord Freud
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, for this amendment. As he has pointed out, it would compel us to publish a report every year on the implementation and impacts of the waiting-period provision under Clause 6. As we have just discussed, Clause 6 introduces the concept of an optional waiting period into the automatic enrolment process. We agree that the effects of the waiting period should be monitored. We have made a commitment to fully evaluate the effects of the reforms and how they are delivered. This will include a proportionate check that the legislation is operating as expected for individuals, employers and the pension industry. As part of this, we intend to monitor employers’ use of waiting periods and the effects on workers’ savings. It is important that we retain the flexibility to design appropriate methods and processes for this evaluation in response to changing circumstances. For example, our decisions about who we survey, how and how often may change over time.
Our plans for monitoring the progress and impacts of the reforms will be set out in a detailed evaluation strategy which we plan to publish this year. We also intend to publish key findings from our evaluation. We therefore feel that there is no need to legislate specifically to ensure monitoring of the waiting period provision, and that to do so may unintentionally constrain us from adopting the most appropriate approach to evaluation in future. I therefore urge the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, to withdraw this amendment.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
I thank the noble Lord for his response. I was reflecting on how many times I have deployed exactly those same arguments in his position. I am not sure that they grow more convincing. However, I understand and am grateful for what the noble Lord said about an evaluation process. I understand that the strategy will be published later this year; we will see what sort of timeframe is attached to that. I am grateful for that and, accordingly, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord German
My Lords, this is a relatively straightforward amendment to provide some certainty in a situation where an employee could have their auto-enrolment deferred more than once because they failed to reach the earnings threshold in one or more months in the three-month waiting period. Perhaps it might be sensible if I gave an example. A jobholder works for two months and their pay is above the threshold, but in month 3 their pay falls below the threshold. Then, when month 4 arrives and their pay perhaps goes back to being above the threshold, it is not clear whether that triggers a new three-month starting period or adds to the two months when it previously happened. Whether the waiting period begins again in month 4 or concludes is the key question here. Should the three months’ earnings be cumulative or consecutive?
This could be the case for many workers in the leisure and tourist industries where work is perhaps seasonal and in the catering trade where it is often related to the number of customers and people are called to work more or fewer hours according to the demand on their services. So a situation where people may not reach the threshold in one month but have reached it in the previous two months is not unlikely. It seems quite unfair if, as soon as they fall below, they have to start again. I remember somebody who formerly worked for me who then went off to train as a barrister and it took him many months to get his final qualification because he could not get to the number of dinners that he had to achieve in the right order. Every time he missed one, he had to start again from dinner number one. It seemed a strange mechanism and we do not want this archaic methodology in this Bill. I beg to move.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord German, has raised an interesting point, which I hope the Minister can clarify. I assume that the situation is that, if you have got to month 3 and you do not have qualifying earnings, there is nothing at that point to trigger automatic enrolment. When you next have your qualifying earnings is presumably when you would be automatically enrolled. Certainly, if you had to start again, that would add injustice to something about which we are already not very happy.
Lord Freud
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord German for this amendment, which would restrict an employer to using one waiting period per worker and would ensure that automatic enrolment would take place once a worker’s earnings had reached the earnings threshold for three months, whether those three months were consecutive or not. Thus the single three-month waiting period could be accrued over a far longer period of time where the individual’s earnings fluctuate. I should take this opportunity to clarify for the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, how it would actually work. If you had low earnings for the first two months and hit the target at the third month, you would be auto-enrolled. However, if you did not hit it in that third month, you would effectively be back to your dinner problem and have to start again. That is how it would work.
As I explained, Clause 6 introduces the concept of an optional waiting period into the automatic enrolment process. This is central to our commitment in this Bill to rebalance the administrative burdens on employers while ensuring workers’ access to pensions saving. The waiting period is designed to meet employers’ requirements by being simple and easy to understand and use. This is clearly crucial to its success. At the point at which the employer applies a waiting period, they will not be required to undertake a check on whether the worker is eligible for automatic enrolment. The employer must check eligibility at the end of the waiting period and we are keen to avoid them having to check it twice or more.
The waiting period consists of a single block of time, regardless of whether the individual’s eligibility for automatic enrolment fluctuates during that period. If the worker satisfies the automatic enrolment eligibility criteria at the end of the period, they will be enrolled into the employer’s scheme on that date. If not, the employer will monitor the worker’s status until they satisfy the eligibility criteria. At that point, the employer may apply a further waiting period if they wish. It need not be for the full three months.
We recognise my noble friend’s concern that workers with fluctuating earnings could miss out on pension saving due to the use of multiple waiting periods. While it is difficult to estimate the likelihood of this occurrence, our analysis suggests that few people are likely to have fluctuating earnings around the level that they traverse in and out of automatic enrolment eligibility. Are we, therefore, devising something very complicated for a problem that is pretty small, which is what our analysis suggests? It is also the case that, for those on sustained low earnings throughout their working life, state benefits can replace most income in retirement. Common sense suggests that it would not be rational to lever such people into private savings. It is important to remember that they will have the right to opt in at any point during the waiting period.
This amendment would add a substantial additional burden and complexity to the waiting period process and would not be easy for employers to understand and use. It would require the employer to monitor an individual’s automatic enrolment eligibility continuously throughout the waiting period and to keep a record of the period of eligibility accrued during the waiting period.
Employers requested the waiting period as an administrative easement. To make the process so burdensome would negate its value. At this stage, it is crucial that we get the reforms bedded in and that we ensure that employers find it easy to comply with these new duties. It is therefore critical that the processes are simple for employers to understand and use. In the absence of any persuasive evidence of a problem, we feel that it would not be right to introduce greater complexity and a significant burden to a process whose very purpose is to offer administrative easements to employers.
I offer noble Lords my assurance, however, that we are committed to fully evaluating the effects of the reforms and how they are delivered. As part of this, we intend to monitor employers’ use of waiting periods and the effects on workers’ savings. I urge the noble Lord to withdraw this amendment.
Lord German
My Lords, I am still a little confused over the explanation. I understand fully the point about somebody hitting the relevant target in the third month. However, my question was the other way round—where someone hits the target in months one and two but does not hit it in month three. In seasonal worker terms, this could happen if someone was picked up and employed in May, perhaps worked through May, June and July and found a bad—wet or something—August, for which they could not get the money in. The important issue is simplicity but also understanding. It may be that a three-month period applies, but it was not absolutely clear from the Minister’s reply when, once you have a first waiting period, the second test would occur. What if you fail to meet the criteria that he has just described in that first three-month period? You will then need to have another piece of information made available to the employee to say, “You have not quite done it but this is the way you go next”. It seems to become far more complex if you cannot have it in some way accumulatively worked out. I will obviously withdraw the amendment. However, I hope that the Minister will come back at some stage with some further explanation of the anomaly of the people who are in the position that I have described, in which they pass the threshold in months 1 and 3 but not in month 2, yet wish to maintain their position within the company.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
Before the noble Lord withdraws his amendment, I wish to follow up on that point. I was somewhat surprised by the answer that the Minister gave. There is a simpler process. Somebody becomes employed; they have their three-month waiting period and, at the end of the three months, you look to see whether they have qualifying earnings and need to be auto-enrolled. If they do not, presumably they are in the same position as everyone else who has been around for a long while—you continue to monitor them at an appropriate date to see whether they have qualifying earnings or if they have reached the age of 22. It will be the same for everyone. Is that not the simpler way to do it? I do not understand why there is the need to start the cycle again, which is what the Minister said. That seems to be fundamentally wrong and not the simplest route.
Lord Freud
Perhaps I could just interrupt. What I have not made adequately clear, for which I apologise, is how big this problem might be. The universe of people who earn between £7,000 and £7,475 is 140,000 people, so we are talking about very small numbers. Moreover, they would have to be fluctuating at the wrong time. We could be setting up a very complicated system to look after a very small number of people. We cannot quantify this exactly but I give an order-of figure to give noble Lords a feel for it. We are talking about between 8 million and 9 million extra people going into pensions, so this may be just too much of a burden relative to the potential number of people whom we are protecting.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
Will the Minister just help me on one point? I do not want to prolong this. If the complexity he suggests arises from the need to monitor cumulative earnings over a two-month or three-month period, I can accept that, but we do not need that. If we just had the proposition that somebody waits for three months and if at the end of three months they do not have qualifying earnings and are therefore not auto-enrolled, you simply roll them on to the next point that they do have qualifying earnings. You put them in the pot the same as anyone else. Is that not a simpler system than having an alternative system whereby you have to see who has been previously deferred and had a waiting period and keep the clock running on them individually? I would have thought the simpler system was not to have to take account of cumulative earnings but, once you get past that three-month period, simply to check, as you would have to for everyone, whether they have reached the age of 22 or qualifying earnings, et cetera. There is quite a lot of disquiet around this. We are not trying to be difficult. I urge the Minister to take this away because I see it as something that could be brought back on Report.
Lord Freud
My Lords, I can see when I am up against the wall. I am not completely insensitive. I will look to see whether there is some simple fix and, if there is, I will write to noble Lords. However, it would have to be very simple, because the risk/reward in terms of burden versus people who are at risk is just on the wrong side. It does not seem to add up to me.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, I have high hopes for the thrust behind these amendments, given that all sides of the Committee today share a similar take on the problem. I know that the Minister shares this view and I hope that he can give us some positive indications of ways forward. I am particularly happy to follow the noble Lords, Lord Stoneham and Lord Boswell, on this.
We discussed earlier the question of the number of job changes and we know that, as I said, the median number of job changes is around 11—25 to 26 per cent will have between 11 and 15 job changes and others will have even more than that. That means, depending on the rules of individual schemes and how long people are required to work before they can join a scheme—it could be two years or up to two years, or your contributions could be returned to you and you might decide to hold them in a pot—that it is likely that low-paid employees and some not necessarily low-paid employees, but people who have moved a lot in their first five, 10 or 15 years of earning, will build up some pension entitlement in five of those jobs. At, say, £11,000—half women’s average earnings—with a fairly conventional DC scheme, which I know applies in a lot of the charitable or voluntary world, a five plus five would mean that such a woman would have something between £1,000 and £1,200 a year in her pot for each year in her job. That could mean that she had five or six pots of anywhere between £1,000 and £3,000, depending on the rules of the scheme. The question then is what happens to those pots.
I am cross with myself because I missed a trick and I should have put it down as an amendment, because one way to approach this, obviously, is to follow in a slightly larger form the thrust of the argument of the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, which is to raise the trivial commutation limit, which at the moment is £18,000— 1 per cent of the lifetime savings allowance. A trivial commutation limit of, say, £25,000 or £30,000 would pick up quite a lot of these very small pots without having to hassle about whether they were at or above a certain level. Of course, some providers—some banks and so on—will allow you to bring together five or six small pots and consolidate them, because they are then worth handling.
In addition, the Government propose in due course to remove annuitisation at the age of 75. However, the Treasury—bless it—has insisted on a quite absurd de minimis figure of £20,000 income. That is quite unnecessary; it merely needs to be about £8,000. Of course, if the new state pension comes into play at £140, you will not need any de minimis for failing to annuitise, because it will float you off all public funds, apart from housing benefit. Therefore, with, I hope, the new state pension of £140, not only would NEST be safe but so would all other small savings schemes. You would not then need things such as trivial commutation rules because the choice would be left entirely to the individual. We would be kicking out a lot of silly mess and tangles that have been imposed by the Treasury, which is more concerned to avoid £1 being lost through manipulation of the tax system than it is to encourage £10 being gathered into the savings system. I consider that to be really rather sad. I am sorry that I missed that point, but we will come back to the trivial commutation issue later if it seems worth doing so.
If the person in question cannot trivially commute and she is handling pots of, say, £3,000 each, she will be getting somewhere between £1 and £4 a week from each of those small pots. The Pensions Advisory Service—I should declare an interest as a board member of TPAS—has been very concerned about what noble Lords have called “orphan assets”. At the moment, a poor woman can use these small pots altogether, but she may end up with, say, £20,000 or £25,000 in her NEST pot, have three, four or five other pots of £3,000, £2,000 or £1,000 and lose all those small pots, which are above the trivial commutation figure, are too small to be annuitised and cannot be bundled together. She would effectively lose a third of her lifetime savings, even though she is on a very low income. No one would regard that as decent. Therefore, I think that she should be able to bundle or consolidate her various pots. For this purpose, I am talking about NEST but I am perfectly happy for it to be any willing provider. The important thing is that she can access all her savings.
What would be the advantage of my proposal? It is very simple. First, above all, the person in question retains the full value of all her savings, rather than possibly losing some of them. Secondly, it represents simplicity for her in retirement, as she could be handling just one flow of pension income rather than multiple flows of small pots. Thirdly, there is a sort of best-value option going on here—a version of the open-market option. In this Bill we have not yet talked about disinvestment strategies, but I suspect that she would get a better return on disinvestment were she to purchase an annuity if all these small pots were bundled together and consolidated into one scheme, rather than if she were trying to play around with various small pots to avoid losing them.
In my amendment, I stipulate that the transfer should be able to take place the year before retirement simply to recognise the concerns—they may be exaggerated but they certainly exist—among some pension funds that existing scheme providers will not want a wholesale flood of money from their schemes under management going earlier into NEST, possibly because NEST will appear so much more attractive in terms of the reduced fees that will be charged and therefore the amount that will be available for accumulation. I do not mind that, but they might, and therefore it may be a price that has to be paid.
Given the support around the Committee today, given that I know that the Minister is sympathetic to the issue that has been raised and given that we have produced two or three different ways in which we can approach this problem, I hope that we will get a sympathetic hearing from the Minister.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, given the hour, I rise briefly to say that we have put our names to the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lady Hollis because we support the thrust of it. We certainly also support the thrust of the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, as amended by that in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Boswell. This issue seems to have been around for a long time. The Minister may well push that back at us and ask why we did not do something about it, and that would be a good question.
If I have any caveat at all in relation to NEST, it is one that the Minister himself may have. That there should be no transfers into NEST was part of the consensus, although the consensus has been a little disturbed by the Bill, so that does not preclude this being opened up. It changes systems and the costs as well, but those are second-order issues in relation to the substantive matter that has been raised. The time is now right to deal with that.
Lord German
My Lords, I want to say a brief word about Amendment 38, which is in the group. Clearly, the Johnson review looked at this issue and having weighed up both sides of the argument, recommended that the Government should proceed to legislate. The words of the recommendation were quite ambiguous. It said:
“We are therefore recommending that the Government legislate for the removal of the contributions cap in 2017”.
One could read that as recommending legislating in 2017 for removal of the contribution cap, or as recommending legislating now. Actually, the text of the Johnson review does use the word “now”—in other words, it should be part of this Bill—but because neither the Minister nor the Government are on record yet as saying why they have not chosen to follow that advice, it would be very helpful if this amendment could be probed in that manner.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, perhaps I may comment briefly. I can see the thrust of my noble friend’s amendment. I remember that, when we debated the cap, we debated whether there should be an additional lifetime element as well. I think that, at one stage, we debated whether there could be a two or three-year period when one carried forward the unused amount. My recollection is that, other than the annual cap, which is as it now is, all that fell by the wayside, but the Minister may be able to update us on it.
It seems a good idea to me to be able to use the headroom in respect of unused bits, although I do not think there is anything that precludes someone who is, or might become, a member of NEST making a voluntary contribution up to the limit. The limit is not, as I understand it, an employee and an employer limit; there is a limit in respect of contributions for an individual. Certainly, for the reasons that my noble friend advances, if there were opportunities to use some headroom to get more into NEST, that would be good, so far as the removal of the cap supports the thrust of that. Again, given the consensus that was there and the existence of the cap, everything that has the potential to disturb that in the interim makes life a bit more difficult, although it would be good if it could go at the earliest opportunity.
Lord Freud
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness and my noble friends for bringing the important issue of the NEST contribution limit to the attention of the Committee. I shall deal with the amendments in the order they were raised. The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, has raised, through Amendment 36, a vital point about the ability of NEST members to make contributions to their retirement pots that exceed the minimum contributions required by automatic enrolment. NEST has been designed to provide a low-cost, portable pension scheme for low to moderate earners. We want to encourage people, where possible, to save more than the minimum. The NEST order and rules already allow a member to make contributions up to the annual contribution limit in the financial year in which the contributions are made, as the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, pointed out.
The current limit is already set at such a level that it enables median earners to contribute as much as twice the minimum contribution requirement in a tax year. Allowing NEST members to make use of unused annual contribution limits in subsequent years would undermine the purpose of the annual contribution limit. This limit was designed to ensure that NEST does not adversely impact on existing good-quality pension provision. While I understand the principle behind this amendment, we should not forget the purpose of NEST. This is to enable millions of people to participate in pension saving from which they are currently excluded because they do not have access to suitable workplace pension provision. Filling this supply gap requires NEST to be both low-cost and as straightforward a scheme as possible. Adding to the complexity of administering NEST through complex arrangements for calculating the maximum annual contribution would undermine those aims.
Moving on to Amendment 37, the noble Baroness raises another important point, about how the annual contribution limit should be calculated. The limit, alongside the transfer restrictions, is designed to focus NEST on its target market of low to moderate earners. This is to ensure that NEST will complement existing good-quality pension provision, not replace it.
The baseline contribution limit was set at £3,600 in 2005 terms, following wide consultation on the proposals in the White Paper, Personal Accounts: A New Way to Save. Responses on the appropriate level for an annual contribution limit were based on analysis of several factors, in particular, the potential impact on existing schemes and the ability of individuals to save flexibly for their retirement. In line with the provisions in the scheme order, NEST Corporation has adjusted the contribution limit for 2011-12, prior to scheme launch, to £4,200. The current method of setting the annual contribution limit strikes the right balance. It ensures that NEST focuses on its target market of those excluded from pension savings as a result of market failure, while providing for a level of contributions that is sufficient to allow employers and individuals to contribute more than the minimum required.
I turn to Amendment 38, tabled by my noble friends Lord Stoneham and Lord German. This puts forward the recommendation from the Making Automatic Enrolment Work review that the Government legislate now to remove NEST’s annual contribution limit from 2017. That review recognised the importance of the NEST contribution limit during the introduction of the reforms. It acknowledged that there was broad consensus behind the reforms, and that NEST’s role was to fill the supply gap that those in the existing industry currently find difficult to serve. The review saw the contribution cap as a key lever in ensuring two things: that NEST remains focused on this target market as the reforms are staged; and that during this important period it does not adversely impact existing good-quality pension provision. However, the review team considered that once the reforms were fully implemented it may be appropriate to remove the cap. This is both to ease the administrative burden on NEST and to avoid any unintended message that there was somehow a maximum appropriate level of pension saving.
Great minds think alike. Section 74 of the Pensions Act 2008 already requires the Secretary of State to appoint a person to review the effect of the annual contribution limit in 2017. By this time, the reforms will have been fully implemented and we will have more evidence on the effect of the reforms as a whole, including the impact of NEST on the marketplace. I am not saying that the review team was wrong. I am saying that, given that it saw 2017 as the right time to remove the cap—by then we will have much more evidence of the impact of NEST in the real world—2017 is also a more sensible time to consider changing or removing the NEST annual contribution limit. Since this can be achieved by secondary legislation, there is no need to legislate now. I understand the principles behind these amendments. However, now is not the time and, given the scope individuals already have to make additional contributions and our intention to review the contribution limit in 2017, I urge the noble Baroness to withdraw this amendment.
Lord Stoneham of Droxford
In the interests of brevity as time is short, I am very happy to speak to Amendments 40 and 41, which are grouped separately.
Amendment 40 is related to the previous amendment, which concerned small pension pots. We want to ensure that small contributors to pensions over short periods are given due protection. We want to see that individuals do not lose out where they have less than two years’ service, particularly losing the employer’s contribution if withdrawn. We should like to see some ongoing discussion and review of how the position of these savers and pensioners can be protected. However, I accept that the transfer of pension capital is critical to this.
Amendment 41 is a probing amendment. It goes back to the discussion that we had on the past couple of amendments on the whole issue of the costs of pension schemes. We remain concerned that there are still no incentives for employers to be responsible for minimising the costs of the occupational pension schemes in which they are involved. We accept that progress has been made on this but we also accept that the Turner commission originally recommended more action on this point. We would like to make sure that, as the scheme is developed, there is an ongoing commitment to review whether the employer’s contribution should be net of the costs of the schemes. I beg to move.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, in relation to Amendment 40, from the earlier response that we got from the Minister in relation to small pots and all the activity that is going on there, I presume that the sort of protection that the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, is looking for will be encompassed within that whole exercise. Accordingly, I should be interested to see the outcome of that in due course. Unless I am misunderstanding this, that is where it would be dealt with.
Lord Freud
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Stoneham for these two amendments, which concern the same issue—that of protection. Amendment 40 seeks to give us the powers to make arrangements to support short-term workers to build their pension savings. It is particularly those individuals who will receive a refund when they leave an occupational scheme within two years who will lose that opportunity. Clearly, the refund can be a default action, although they can choose to transfer the whole pension pot to another scheme if that is appropriate. Clearly, there is a very legitimate concern here that the default refund may mean that some individuals do not build up any kind of decent pot over time.
These are the areas that we are considering through the call for evidence on regulatory differences between different types of pension schemes, so I confirm to the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, that our activity here addresses this issue. It is a very complex area and there are many considerations on both sides that we need to take into account before making a decision or changing legislation. The issues are the trade-offs between helping employers and schemes and increasing pension savings. We cannot, for example, limit short-service refunds without considering appropriate processes to help occupational schemes to manage additional small pension pots. Therefore, everything connects to everything else. As I have already described, we issued a call for evidence on 31 January to initiate a debate on possible solutions. The response will come this summer.
Amendment 41 would ensure that employers take into account pension charges when calculating their employer contributions. I assure noble Lords that we are not complacent on this issue. We fully appreciate the impact that charges can have on an individual’s pension pot, particularly given the beta returns that we are currently seeing. We are taking steps to ensure that such charges do not have a disproportionate impact on members’ savings. We will publish guidance on default investment options on automatic enrolment schemes later in the spring. That will cover suitable charging structures, as I said. The guidance will encourage appropriate charges which, first, match members’ interests, and, secondly, protect individuals from charges that are excessive in relation to the product that they are paying for.