Guaranteed Income for Retirees

Nick Thomas-Symonds Excerpts

Tuesday 17th November 2015 Westminster Hall

[Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. It is also a pleasure to appear before the Economic Secretary to the Treasury for the first time.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) on securing this timely debate. I agree with much of what he said. This is the time to take stock of the pension freedom reforms. The idea of monitoring and identifying risks is important, and I will return to that in a moment. The concepts of supporting society and planning for the future are also vital.

My hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham) and the hon. Member for East Lothian (George Kerevan) made good points about choice and protection. My hon. Friend also made a crucial intervention about pensioner poverty, and it is important that we monitor that issue.

The hon. Members for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Roger Mullin), and for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown), raised the issues faced by women born in the 1950s due to the increase brought in by the Pensions Act 2011 in the state pension age. In that respect, I have a question for the Minister about transitional provision. On 20 June 2011, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions said:

“Let me simply repeat what I said earlier—it is a bit like a recording, but I shall do it none the less: we have no plans to change equalisation in 2018, or the age of 66 for both men and women in 2020, but we will consider transitional arrangements.”—[Official Report, 20 June 2011; Vol. 530, c. 52.]

What has happened on transitional arrangements since 2011? What meetings have been held on them? What proposals do the Government have to put such arrangements in place to assist women who lost out by virtue of the date on which they were born in the 1950s? I sincerely hope the Minister can deal with that issue today.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Neil Gray) on his contribution. He made a good point about the problems that will arise in the future if the Government do not deal with these issues now. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mhairi Black)—we can safely say that every Member of the House is closer to retirement than she is. She made a good point at the start of her speech, and the scrutiny and constructive criticism she mentioned throughout her contribution are precisely what needs to be brought to bear on these reforms in the months and years ahead.

The debate has been extremely useful in highlighting a number of issues that the Government need to deal with. The issue of scams came up, and it is crucial. In that respect, I quote the recent Work and Pensions Committee report:

“The pension freedom reforms have increased the prospects of people being conned out of their life savings.”

That should be a warning to the Government. The report also treats the promotion of awareness as a crucial weapon against those scams, and the Government should seriously consider paying more attention to that.

The hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South brought up the issue of Pension Wise. To deal first with take-up, the first set of statistics we have had seem to suggest that only about 18,000 people—fewer than one in 10—have accessed the guidance. Clearly, more needs to be done to flag up the availability of Pension Wise. Other criticisms in the Work and Pensions Committee report also need to be dealt with. The website has been described as not fit for purpose; the Government should attend to that damning criticism. The guidance has also been criticised for being too general on the one hand, in that it pays insufficient attention to people’s individual circumstances, and too narrow on the other, in that it deals with pensions but not the other things that people need to cope with in retirement. Pension provision is a crucial part of that, but people will have varying interests, such as property that they own, or their care needs. Those other things need to be taken into account in the guidance provided by Pension Wise.

Another issue is the advice gap. Someone whose pension pot is enormous will have access to expensive financial advice on it, and that would be proportionate. However, there is an enormous gap in the middle between people who have access to the free guidance, and those who obtain specialist advice at the top. Many people with pension pots will be in the middle, where such advice is not available. This is a two-way street: we want to increase demand from people who want advice, but on the supply side, we need a regulatory framework in which advisers feel comfortable and confident in giving advice, and about the liabilities to which they open themselves. In that regard I look forward to the results of the financial advice market review, but there is action that can be taken now, certainly as far as improvements to Pension Wise are concerned.

The hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber mentioned the Social Market Foundation’s recent “Golden Years?” report. That, too, should warn the Government about what can happen in these situations when policy is not managed appropriately in the short and medium term. He mentioned, of course, the cautious Australian, the quick-spending Australian and the typical American, but the statistics from Australia make sobering reading. It seems that about 25% of people exhaust their pension pots by age 70, and the figure is about 40% by age 75. Those numbers are highly significant, particularly in an age of increasing life expectancy. Our cautious Australian would decumulate by less than about 1% a year, which would be a more optimistic statistic; but we might compare that with the decumulation rate of about 8% a year for the typical American. That would be a far more worrying statistic to deal with.

There is a broader point to make. Advice and guidance are obviously important at the age of 55, but we must move away from the view that this is exclusively about making sure that people have the appropriate information at the start of their retirement. The reality is that people’s needs between the ages of, say, 55 and 65 are different from their needs between 65 and 75, or 75 and 85. Life expectancy is of course rising, and their needs would be different between 85 and 95 as well. I suppose that that point goes to the heart of what the debate is about: a guaranteed income—that is the phrase used in the title of the debate—throughout retirement. We must look beyond what happens at age 55, although that is highly important, at structured ways through retirement, in which people have access to the advice and guidance they need to make informed decisions. It is vital that the Government do that.

Overall, we can see today’s debate as a marker for the need for action. No one wants people to exhaust their pension pots at age 75. We want action now, to ensure that people will be protected from scams, and that they can get the advice and guidance they need.

--- Later in debate ---

[Harriett Baldwin]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that clarification. I agree that we need to evaluate the measures, which is why this is such a timely debate. It is extremely important that, as people take advantage of the new pension freedoms, they have the right information and the tools they need to make an informed and confident decision about their financial future. I recognise that there is a range of different circumstances and that one size does not fit all.

It might be helpful if I summarise some of the changes made over the past five years to the pension landscape to strengthen the finances of people in retirement. They include ensuring that there is no enforced retirement age at 65, and strengthening the first pillar of retirement income, the basic state pension, which now rises with a triple-lock—increasing by the greater of 2.5%, earnings or inflation every year. That has been very important cumulatively over the past five years—the income replacement of the state pension is now at its highest level since 1992—and we have pledged to continue that throughout this Parliament.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I refer back to the Hansard quotation from 20 June 2011 that I cited about the transitional provisions for women born in the 1950s who have lost out under the new state pension provisions. Can the Minister update the House about what has happened with that policy and how the transitional provisions will be introduced?

[Harriett Baldwin]

I assure the hon. Gentleman that I am just setting out the background. I will address the points that colleagues raised later in my speech.

The changes we are making to simplify the state pension are also important, because they are going to set a new level for the state pension that is higher than the means-tested threshold that we have had in this country historically. That is very important, because we do not want those who draw down their retirement savings to be thrown on to means-tested benefits. I believe I am right in saying that that is a crucial difference from the situation in Australia. We have also safeguarded support for older people in other ways, such as providing free bus passes, eye tests, television licences and so on.

The changes we made in April are an integral part of the whole landscape. I will describe for the benefit of all hon. Members what we think success for the reforms looks like: a vibrant and competitive retirement income market with a range of different products that give people the flexibility and security that is right for them, and well informed, engaged consumers who can access the guidance and advice they need. As more people are automatically enrolled in employer schemes, more people engage with the process. More than 5 million more people are now saving for a retirement income than were in 2010, and by the full roll-out in a couple of years’ time, we will have almost 9 million additional new savers through automatic enrolment, saving £15 billion a year more in aggregate.