Pension Schemes Bill

Debate between Mark Hoban and Steve Webb

Tuesday 2nd September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mark Hoban (Fareham) (Con)]

I apologise to my right hon. Friend the Minister for missing some of his speech and to the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Gregg McClymont) for missing his. I had hoped to be here for both, but owing to the length of the urgent question and another engagement outside the House, I could not be. Nevertheless, I am delighted to be here in time to make a contribution.

On the Government’s legacy, as my right hon. Friend said, our pension reforms have been one of our key acts in government. We have done a huge amount to reform the pensions system we inherited and to implement auto-enrolment. The Chair of the Work and Pensions Select Committee, the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg), gives the previous Government credit for auto-enrolment, but my right hon. Friend was right to talk about the practical changes we have made to make it work. He also made the powerful and important point that the take-up rate for smaller businesses during roll-out has exceeded expectations. A lot of people expected the rate to fall, but it should now be recognised that many people currently not saving for retirement see auto-enrolment as a key way of protecting themselves and their families in retirement.

The changes that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor announced in the Budget to give people control over their pension pots in retirement are also important and fit in with other reforms, such as raising the state retirement age, introducing the triple lock and uprating the state pension. We provided a state pension that is both fair and affordable in the long term. We made a change to pension tax relief, too, ensuring that it is both fair and affordable as well. The cumulative effect of those reforms is to ensure that people will save more towards their retirement, that more people will indeed save for it and that they will be rewarded for doing so. We are treating those who retire as grown-ups, able to manage their own money.

The work we have done so far is important, but I do not think the job is done. That is why the Bill is so important. We know that under defined-benefits schemes, those who worked knew that every year of their employment helped to build up a guaranteed pension income—a fraction of their final salary—thus providing certainty. In building up that guaranteed income, once the employee had made a contribution, the cost of providing the guarantee rested with the employer. If the investment return fell, the employers had to increase their contributions; if employees and pensions lived longer, the cost of the changes were again borne by the employer. In a way, of course, that guarantee sowed the seeds of the decline of defined-benefits contribution schemes, as it became increasingly expensive to provide that guarantee to employees. That accounts for the decline in DB schemes over a number of decades.

Under a defined-contributions scheme, it is of course the employee who bears the longevity risks in building up the pension pot. It is the employee who bears the investment risk, too. Certainty in retirement in return for a fixed contribution by the employee has been replaced by uncertainty, the cost of which is borne by employees.

The impact of the switch from DB to DC would have been mitigated if contribution rates had remained unchanged, but the impact of the transfer of risk has been compounded by the reduction in the level of contributions. The most recent Office for National Statistics figures I have seen show that the total contribution rate for DB schemes is 19.2%. The rate for DC schemes is under half that, at 9.4%. What does that mean in practice? As the Department’s own figures show, 11 million people between the age of 22 and state pension age will not save enough to deliver an adequate replacement income in retirement. Employees have thus seen a reduction in contributions to their pension schemes; they bear risks previously borne by their employer; and they bear uncertainty about the income they will enjoy in retirement.

Where does this Bill fit into that picture? Defined ambition can, through guarantees, help to provide greater certainty in retirement. I think the second area where these schemes can have merit is in maximising the return on pension contributions for members. The collective nature of defined-ambition schemes creates economies of scale on the costs of running a pension scheme, which should help to improve the overall returns for employees. Furthermore, the open-ended nature of a collective scheme can change the investment strategy of a fund. For an individual scheme, as the employee moves towards retirement, the fund’s objectives move from seeking capital growth towards locking in gains already made, providing greater certainty about the size of the member’s pension pot. An open-ended scheme and particularly a collective scheme should shift the investment strategy towards capital growth and away from simply locking in growth—a point to which I shall return in a minute.

The second area where defined ambition will help is through the use of guarantees to deliver more certain outcomes for employees. As I said, one of the merits of DB schemes for employees is that they guarantee an income. Depending on the scheme, people will know after a year’s service that they will have “banked” an 80th or a 60th or a 40th of a year’s salary or the salary on retirement. With a DC scheme, all people know, in effect, is that they have made contributions of X and made net investment gains of Y; and while the pensions statement will project a monthly income in retirement, it will be based on how much more they will contribute, the investment gains between now and retirement and the annuity rates at the point of retirement. The only thing known for certain about that projection is that it will be wrong.

The contrast between DC and DB schemes is stark; the question is whether we can bridge the gap between the certainty of DB and the uncertainty of DC. The Government’s vision of DA or shared-risk schemes is, to quote the Government response to the consultation,

“to secure a guarantee on the income that will be received in retirement, that builds up gradually during the savings period”.

There is a great deal of merit in that. The employee has visibility and certainty of income in retirement. That is one of the great assets of DB schemes. That helps people to see how much they will have in retirement and, crucially, helps them plan for retirement. However, the crucial distinction is that, in defined-ambition schemes, the employer’s contribution is fixed. Therefore, if the income is guaranteed, the cost of that guarantee must be borne by the scheme members.

I would like to understand a bit more what the Financial Secretary expects those guarantees to look like and how he expects them to be financed. What proportion of the pension does he expect to be guaranteed? Presumably, in the same way that insurance companies have to provide solvency reserves for the guarantees that they issue, defined-ambition schemes will need to provide reserves to fund the guarantees.

I think it will be the case that the higher the guaranteed element, the greater the shift in asset allocation away from risk seeking and capital growth towards capital protection—in effect the challenge facing individual DC schemes but on a collective basis. Who will design the rules for determining the reserves to be held against the guarantees? Will it be the Pensions Regulator or the Prudential Regulation Authority? Will it depend on whether the scheme is trust or contract-based?

I believe that these measures create opportunities for a new model of pension scheme. That model will smooth some of the rough edges of the transition from DB to DC schemes. It should help to reduce the risk for employees. However, it is not without its challenges. For it to work effectively, schemes will need to reach a critical mass in terms of membership to enable the economies of scale to work their way through and to ensure that there is a sufficient flow of people coming into and out of the scheme—that there are new members and those new members balance the number of members ceasing to be active members. The formula that drives the payouts from the scheme will need to be carefully thought through to ensure intergenerational fairness, so that younger members are not subsidising pensioners.

In the Netherlands, schemes have been established on a sectoral basis reflecting the social model there. That helps to deliver the critical mass needed for the schemes to obtain economies of scale and smooth investment returns. How does my right hon. Friend the Minister think schemes in the UK will achieve that scale? Does he envisage that schemes will be built on a sectoral basis, or does he envisage some master scheme being set up that will be open to all businesses?

[Steve Webb]

I am enjoying my hon. Friend’s characteristically well-informed speech. To reassure him on industry schemes, when we visited the Netherlands to look at how the system is run there, we came across the Dutch tulip growers scheme. I can reassure him that we do not have such narrow definitions in mind.

[Mr Hoban]

I am not sure that tulips and the Netherlands are necessarily an appropriate model. One of the earliest financial crashes was in the price of tulip bulbs, so it may not be a model to follow. However, the point about sectoral and non-sectoral schemes is important. Other countries have had success where they have had a social model—a relationship between employers and employees—that we do not necessarily see in the UK. There will be questions about how to encourage more employers to come together to create these schemes. Perhaps there is a role for insurers in that regard.

Although these schemes aim to boost returns and offset some of the impact of under-saving, we need to do more to help people save more towards retirement. Auto-enrolment will help to ensure that more people are saving, but as I pointed out earlier, the DWP’s figures estimated that some 11 million people would not save enough to meet the recommended replacement income for retirement. If we look at contribution rates to pension schemes in other countries, we will see that the 8% auto-enrolment rate lags behind the rate in other countries that have established innovative pension schemes. In Australia, the contribution rate to the Super scheme is heading towards 12%, and in the Netherlands—the Minister mentioned the Netherlands, so I feel at liberty to talk about it—the contribution rate to the scheme is over 20%, which is significantly higher. We have some way to go before we match those contribution levels.

I think it would be wrong to contemplate increasing contribution rates before the roll-out of auto-enrolment has been completed, but we should not ignore the fact that people are not saving enough towards their retirement and we need to find ways to help people to build higher contributions. There are ways in which we can do that. We have not done enough to draw on the insights from behavioural economics and initiatives such as Save More Tomorrow, which has been adopted in some parts of the United States, which encourage people to increase their contribution rates when their pay rises, making a commitment today to secure increased contributions in the future. I think we can look at the way in which fiscal incentives encourage those on low incomes to save more towards their retirement, and I certainly think we can support people to make better choices on retirement. That is a significant area that we need to focus on, and it is the last point I want to touch on in my speech.

As I said at the start, we have introduced a series of radical reforms to the pensions system over the past four and a half years. However, to make the most of the freedoms that we need, we must make sure people have the necessary support to make the right choices both when they are building up their pension pot and when they choose to use it. That is why I am very supportive of the guidance guarantee. I know the Government are going to introduce amendments to this Bill, either in Committee or on Report, to introduce the guidance guarantee, and it is an important part of the package of legislation, but we must also think about how we can encourage the industry to go further to provide better guidance both before the point of retirement and afterwards. The decisions we make at the point of retirement are ones we would want to come to as individuals to revisit later on.

We need to find a service that will help those who feel they cannot afford independent financial advice without crowding out independent financial advisers, and we need to give people support to think about draw-down, annuities and the other products that are out there, to help them maximise their income over their retirement, and also to think, while they are saving, about what sort of lifestyle they want in retirement. Too often, people do not think about what they aspire to in retirement. They tend to shape their retirement around how much they have saved, rather than thinking before they retire, “This is what I would like to do. These are the holidays I’d like to have. This is the sort of lifestyle I’d like.” We need to give people more support in that regard.

I also believe we should be harnessing technology to draw together details of people’s savings—not just their pensions, but their individual savings accounts and bank savings—to end the complicating fragmentation of data. That should encourage people to look at the totality of their financial assets and use that information to engage with their retirement planning.

Pensions Strategy

Debate between Mark Hoban and Steve Webb

Thursday 20th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his wholehearted endorsement of our plans. The guidance guarantee is as it says on the tin: it is guaranteed. It is a right of members of the scheme. It is a duty on schemes to make sure, for the first time, that people coming up to retirement have a conversation with someone who is independent and who is on their side, and the schemes will have to make that happen. The Financial Conduct Authority will oversee that process. We will look into whether we can involve the voluntary sector and the advice sector in that.

We often hear the phrase “advice gap”. The hon. Gentleman suggests that we started from a blank sheet of paper, but we did not. We started from a situation where many people coming to retirement were making the wrong decisions and buying poor value products. This is the sort of thing that we have had to address.

The hon. Gentleman asks whether the Budget was really one for savers. To me the increase in ISA limits sounds like good news for savers. The new pensioners bond coming in next year sounds like good news for savers. New freedoms for pensioners with regard to how they can use their pensions sounds like good news for savers. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman wanted still more, but I quote to him Dr Ros Altmann, who said that yesterday was like London buses—all the good news for savers came at once.

The hon. Gentleman asked the question I thought he might ask. If I paraphrase it loosely, his question, as a former academic, was on “the consistency of the defined ambition framework with liberalised decumulation”. I think that is what he wanted to know about. It is perfectly reasonable for people to have collective provision in accumulation. People can build up pensions collectively and many people will go on buying annuities. Many people will still want an income, but we are giving them new options. Plenty of people will want a scheme in which to go on investing their money into retirement. That will be their choice. Our whole agenda is about new models and new options, not just going from one extreme to another.

The hon. Gentleman asked about action on charges. I assume that he had written his questions before he read my statement. Given that we gave him the statement well before the speech, I am surprised at that. I confirm that next week we will announce the conclusions and the action we are taking—action to tackle problems that were never tackled in 13 years of a Labour Government.

The hon. Gentleman says that guidance is Labour’s policy. I am delighted to hear that, but why was there none in place when his party was running the country? It is good of him to support the plans.

This is bold and radical stuff. People will have guidance for the first time and new flexibilities. Some Labour MPs are saying that this should be blocked because we cannot trust people to spend their own money. I think we should.

[Mr Mark Hoban (Fareham) (Con)]

I welcome the reforms announced by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor yesterday and the further detail my hon. Friend the Minister has given today. I urge him not to overlook the Pensions Advisory Service and the Money Advice Service as potential sources of advice for people approaching retirement. How will he take forward discussions with the industry and the regulator to ensure the availability of good quality products for new pensioners that not only represent good value for money but are properly regulated?

[Steve Webb]

My hon. Friend has great knowledge of these matters from his time at both the Treasury and the Department for Work and Pensions. He is absolutely right to say that we need to make sure that people have guidance that enables them to make informed choices. They will still be able to proceed to formally regulated independent financial advice, but the industry will have to up its game, because now people will have much more choice to take cash, and if they want to take an annuity they will have to be persuaded that it is good value for money. That will be a market impetus to provide better quality products. We have asked the FCA to make sure that a good guidance regime is in place, potentially involving groups such as the excellent Pensions Advisory Service, to which my hon. Friend referred.