Peter Dowd
Main Page: Peter Dowd (Labour - Bootle)Savings (Government Contributions) Bill (First sitting)
Peter Dowd Excerpts
Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)
Q This is to Ms Knight. In a press release response to the Budget, you welcomed the lifetime individual savings account and said:
“The Lifetime ISA will encourage further tax-exempt saving and a dedicated account to save for a home and save for retirement.”
How do you perceive the marketing of the LISA in relation to traditional pension products?
Carol Knight: We do not really see the lifetime ISA as a direct competitor to pensions. We believe there is a cohort of the public for which the LISA will be an attractive proposition, particularly those who are in low-paid income and who fall outside the bracket for auto-enrolment. Self-employed people have an opportunity with the LISA that is not available with a workplace pension. So we believe there are a number of people who would be attracted by a matching proposition and who do not automatically have the opportunity to benefit necessarily from a pension product.
Peter Dowd
Ms Braun, would you like to comment on that question?
Yvonne Braun: For us, what is most important is that there is no confusion between automatic enrolment and the lifetime ISA, so we see it as a complementary product. What is quite important is how it is communicated to people, particularly employees, because we are very clear that there is no employee who will be better off if they switch out of their automatic enrolment pension into a LISA, because with automatic enrolment in a workplace pension scheme they get the employer contributions. If they decide to switch out of that into a LISA, they would lose quite a lot; in fact, we calculated that they could lose up to a third once they get to the age of 60. We think that is really, really important. Communication will also be very critical by the Government, by the guidance services and through providers themselves.
Peter Dowd
Q You mentioned the potential confusion. How do you think that could be avoided, because there is concern that these things will either meld or send out a confusing message?
Yvonne Braun: I think there are a number of mechanisms, such as what the Government put forward in terms of what the LISA is for, but also using the new guidance service, which will be the successor to the Money Advice Service, the Pensions Advisory Service and so on and so forth in 2018. That could also steer people and help them to make the right decision for their circumstances because, as Carol just said, for some people—the self-employed, people who have already maxed out the employer contributions on their pensions or people who may be fortunate enough already to have used up their annual allowance—it is a very positive thing, but it is important that every person makes a decision based on their own circumstances. For most people, switching out of a pension into a LISA will be a very bad decision.
Peter Dowd
Q To follow up on Carol’s comment earlier, you have expressed disappointment about the early withdrawal charges.
The Chair
Peter, sorry, can you please project your voice? There may be people at the back and at this end who are finding it hard to hear.
Peter Dowd
Okay. In the past you have expressed disappointment about early withdrawal charges. What would you suggest instead?
Carol Knight: We believe that the necessity to pay back a bonus if money is withdrawn outside the allowed circumstances is a great enough disincentive to withdrawal at inappropriate times. We believe that the 5% charge across the whole of a savings account is disproportionately difficult, particularly if we are looking at this as a product for people who are low paid and accessing a savings product that they would not use other products for, because of the 25% bonus.
A person’s life circumstances might mean that suddenly they have a need to take their money out. There are all sorts of events that happen during the course of a life, when someone has an urgent need to get some cash to help them through difficult times—for example, being made redundant. To have a 5% charge seems to us to be an inappropriate and harsh penalty to pay. We understand that it is there to encourage people to keep their money in it. As Yvonne said, we would not want to see the LISA used as an alternative to a pension. We believe that it is a complementary product, so keeping the distinction between the two is important. However, we feel that that can be addressed by means such as having to pay back the bonus, rather than having a 5% charge across the whole account.
Peter Dowd
Q Okay. It has been reported that many financial providers may not want or be able to offer a lifetime ISA by the time of its launch. Some have ruled out participating in it altogether. What is your organisation’s view on that?
Carol Knight: There are some organisations that will be ready in April. There is always the need for a lead-in period for people to get systems in place and get trained. To have clarity on the guidance and regulations at the earliest possible opportunity is critical. We have had a short lead-in period for this particular product and some people will be ready, some will not—unfortunately, that is the nature of the game.
Peter Dowd
Q Do you think that the proposed lead-in time is reasonable?
Carol Knight: We would normally ask for a year, but we have not had that opportunity this time.
Peter Dowd
Q I will come to Ms Braun in a second, but on that point, what is your assessment of the awareness of employees and employers of this particular scheme—the lifetime ISA? It is a short run-in period.
Carol Knight: We do not think it will affect employers. This is a personal individual savings account. We do not see it being marketed as an alternative to auto-enrolment. We do not necessarily see it being offered by employers.
Peter Dowd
Q How about awareness, given that you think the run-in period is pretty tight?
Carol Knight: Yes. The publicity to get the scheme in place is important for the public as well as for the industry. There has been a lot of publicity about it. Getting that clarification for people is really important, but the whole question of advice and guidance needs addressing. There is a lot of work going on in other areas looking at this, but it is really important to put more work into enabling people to get the information they need to make informed decisions. Those need to run hand in hand alongside each other.
Yvonne Braun: If I could come back on the lead-in times you mentioned, this was announced at the last fiscal event in April, to be coming into force next April. As the Tax Incentivised Savings Association has done, we have worked with the Treasury and HMRC officials over the summer, to understand better how the detail will work. We are still waiting for clarity from the Financial Conduct Authority about what the conduct rules are going to be. That inevitably puts pressure on providers who are trying to get this ready for next April. As I have said publicly, there will be quite a few who will not be ready for next April. That does not mean that they do not want to offer it, just that from the perspective of their own lead time and systems build time, they need longer.
Peter Dowd
Q I will ask you both to answer this one, if I may. Would you welcome a deferral for a period of time, beyond the suggested introduction date?
Yvonne Braun: In terms of the monthly bonus contributions from Government, there is an argument to defer it until April 2018.
Carol Knight: At this point in the game, a lot of people have put a lot of work into getting it delivered for April 2017, so a change at this point is going to be detrimental to those firms. I think it is too late in the game to make that change, personally.
Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)
Q I wonder whether I could follow up on the point about some financial providers choosing not to participate in the scheme at all. Do you have any further information on that? Do you have any percentage figures for organisations that are either not going to be ready or are not choosing to participate in the scheme at all?
Yvonne Braun: No, I don’t.
The Chair
And Mr Wren.
David Wren: Good morning. I am David Wren from the British Bankers Association, where I look after tax policy.
Peter Dowd
Q Mr McPhail, in the information you provided, you give your views on the Bill, and then you say:
“However, in the longer term we believe that the LISA is a misguided policy, emerging from a fudged review of pension taxation and that its introduction makes the decision making process for investors harder rather than easier and that it will therefore potentially undermine savings behaviour.”
Could you elaborate on that, please?
Tom McPhail: Yes. The context the lifetime ISA came from was a review of pension taxation, which was aborted, to a large extent, in that it did not ultimately change the overall structure of the taxation. It largely left pension taxation unchanged and it introduced a new product as an alternative.
An important point to acknowledge is that all the problems, inconsistencies and illogicalities that exist within pension taxation are still there and still unaddressed. What we have instead is a product that, as we heard from the previous witnesses, will serve purposes for some investors in some circumstances—for a minority of self-employed people, for example, and for people who cannot benefit from an employer contribution into a pension. It will have some benefits but, in the process, it will make the investment landscape more challenging for most investors.
We are in danger of sending ISAs down the same road as pensions, making them more and more complicated. Our business is to make it simple for people to save and invest and do the right thing—to invest responsibly for the future—and when clients ring up now and say, “I’ve got £100 a month I want to save,” we are going to be faced with asking, “Do you have access to a workplace pension? Do you want an individual pension? Do you want a cash ISA, an innovative finance ISA, a stocks and shares ISA or a lifetime ISA? Are you saving for the short term or the medium term? How soon will you need to have access to the money?” It is getting more and more complicated and, frankly, in terms of the big picture in the long term, I think we are going down the wrong road.
Peter Dowd
Q You referred to the fact that there are more challenges for investors, and to the effect that those challenges will have. Can you elaborate on what the effects of the challenges will be?
Tom McPhail: The more complicated you make the decision-making process, the more you put people off doing the right thing. One of the things we have worked very hard at as a business is to make it simple for people to save and invest. Going back 10 or 20 years, a typical pension application for someone who wanted to save for their retirement would run to 20 pages. We have stripped that down to one sheet of A4, and more people are investing in pensions as a consequence. We have 800,000-plus private investor clients—ordinary individuals —and more of them now log into their investment accounts using an app rather than online. We are making it simple for them to save and invest. Every time we have to ask them another question, every time we knock them back by making them think about one more thing, it slows the process down and we lose a few of them. It makes it more complicated. So half of the challenge for all of us here is to make it as simple as possible for people to save and invest for the long term.
Peter Dowd
Q Are you concerned, in the light of the fact that you believe that the area is becoming increasing complex, that there is the capacity out there to give the good information and advice that we seem to be getting told we need? It seems to me that the answer to everything we asked was, “More information, more information, good information, good information,” without it being said exactly what that meant. Would you agree?
Tom McPhail: A lot of the time, the answer is less information. I could send you a 50-page document and you might well not read it. We had that problem with the open market option on pensions: people would get to retirement and we would send them a big stack of papers saying, “You have a right to shop around,” but there was so much paper that people did not shop around, so they bought a poor-value annuity. Actually, the answer is to send them less information but to make sure it is the right information. The Government’s recent work around the financial advice market review was enormously encouraging. It gives us more latitude to give people simple, helpful information that will steer them towards making a good decision.
However, your point is absolutely right: if we do not give them that information and that support to steer them towards the right answers, risks do exist. We heard about workplace pensions earlier and the risks of people opting out of them; that is a good example of where it is really important that we support them with good information, to make sure that they do not do the wrong thing.
Peter Dowd
Q I have a final point and, if I may, Chair, I will ask Mr Wren to make an observation as well. You say that this will potentially undermine savings behaviour, which is exactly the opposite of what anybody wants. Could you tease that out more? It is fine to say that it is complex, but could you put some more meat on the bones? Why will this undermine savings behaviour?
Tom McPhail: We have a lot of people putting long-term money into cash. They are being excessively conservative. The bulk of ISA money sits in cash accounts. Auto-enrolment works from an inertia point of view: it gets people into pensions and it is proving to be a great success. The challenge thereafter is to encourage people to take some responsibility for that pot of money, to take an interest in their long-term savings and, as they move into their 50s and 60s, to think about what they are going to do with that pot of money, whether it is adequate, whether they have been saving enough and how they are going to apply it to draw an income in retirement.
Currently, we have a lot of people just putting money into cash ISAs—short-term money—and sometimes it ends up sitting there for 20 years. That is not a good outcome. It is about striking that balance: making it simple for people, but also drawing them in and getting them increasingly engaged. So the answer to your question is that the more complicated it is, the more we will lose people and the greater the risk that they will just make no decisions at all, as we saw with the open market option on annuities, for example.
Peter Dowd
Mr Wren, have you any observations on that question?
David Wren: Yes, I think a few of the questions that Tom has answered are things we are concerned about. The introduction of the lifetime ISA adds considerable complexity to a market that is not simple anyway. This will be the sixth type of ISA on the market. It directly competes with the help to buy ISA for certain savers with certain aims, and it has an overlap with pensions, savings and various other products. The hybrid nature of the product—between saving for a house and saving long term for retirement—also adds considerable complexity for people who are choosing where to save and what to do. For a single product to try to do both things, which are often competing aims in terms of what someone is saving for, is really challenging.
One of the things Tom spoke about was whether you save in cash or in stocks and shares. Saving for retirement is typically a long-term activity. Stocks and shares are probably a better investment for many people in that context, if not funds and others. Saving for a home was historically a short-term activity. Unfortunately, for many people it is probably becoming a mid-term activity, but the security that cash and similar investments bring is still probably more suitable. Balancing that within a lifetime ISA is going to be very challenging for savers and for organisations that want to offer them to their customers.
Peter Dowd
Q In the information you provided, you say:
“There are concerns that savers may end up with the wrong investments leading to the wrong outcomes as a result of the route through which they enter the market rather than as a result of a conscious investment decision.”
Again, it is important to try to unwrap that. Could you unwrap it a little more for us, please?
David Wren: Absolutely. There were some questions in the previous session about the risks in a lifetime ISA. Ultimately, the lifetime ISA is a wrapper around some assets, and the assets are for you to decide. There will be people who offer only cash lifetime ISAs; they do not offer stocks and shares to any customers, and they will not be offering it for this. There will, presumably, be people who offer only stocks and shares lifetime ISAs. The fact that you have picked up the phone to someone who offers only one particular product may not mean that that is the best product for you. There will hopefully be information out there, and we very much hope the Government will work with us to provide good information to customers on getting the right product.
To answer Tom’s point, to have cash sitting somewhere for 20 years is probably a bad idea, particularly with interest rates as they are at the moment. Similarly, going into stocks and shares for three years is a bad idea—there were questions earlier about the risks that people were exposing themselves to. Helping people get the right access to the right product at the right time is going to be a critical part of making sure that the lifetime ISA is successful.
Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)
Q Tom, I want to go back to your point that this would make the market too complicated and crowded in terms of what products are available. Is it not true that for a long time, many people have been left out of savings altogether—I am particularly thinking of people on low incomes, the self-employed and those with multiple, low-paid occupations? Actually, there is a lack of culture around savings; it is just not the norm for some people. While the auto-enrolment pension will go some way to addressing the pensions issue, as we heard in the previous session, this is in addition to, not instead of, auto-enrolment. Is it not that the product is right, but the key is getting that advice available to people so they can make that decision? This will open up the market to people for whom savings have not been an option before.
Tom McPhail: Given where we are now, six months before the intended launch, our starting point would be to go ahead with this. However, in the longer term we are still of the opinion that it is not going to achieve those aims you have just described.
We also looked at the 2017 auto-enrolment review as an opportunity to adjust some of the thresholds to recognise the changes that have come about as a result of the pensions freedoms and the importance of giving more people more access to retirement savings, to bring some of the lower paid into the pensions system. We have looked at ways to revisit those questions that were not answered around pension tax reliefs and ways to reward people for saving for retirement, but the lifetime ISA is not going to achieve that.
You heard some numbers about the self-employed. Actually, two thirds of the self-employed are already ineligible for the lifetime ISA. So we have a situation where the one group of the population that, more than any other, sets to benefit from the lifetime ISA is ineligible for it. In what way is this a good policy?
You are right about the low-paid: we need to do more for them. We think there are ways we can do that through the pensions system. I am sure you will hear later about Help to Save, which is not an area I want to comment on, but there are other ways to address that. The lifetime ISA is not going to fix those problems.