Pension Schemes Bill [Lords]

Shaun Bailey Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion & Programme motion: House of Commons
Wednesday 7th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Shaun Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Ben Lake) and to hear about all the fantastic work that my former university is doing in the green sector.

This is an important debate. We are talking about something that is often overlooked and under-discussed: the bedrock of people’s futures. The hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith) summed it up well when he said that this is not about financiers in the City of London; it is about people in their kitchens. It is about people in Tredegar or Tipton—their futures and their livelihoods. It is about making sure that they have a sustainable future for their retirement, and the Bill is vital to ensuring that that can continue.

For people of my generation, in their ’20s, pensions are not something we really think about, to be honest. As my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Dr Spencer) summed up well, quite often the issue is information. As the data shows, many people now have numerous jobs. As my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Gareth Davies) pointed out, some people have up to 11 jobs in their lifetime. It is about the slip in the drawer—the final notice that people get when they leave but then forget about it, and it goes to the back of their mind.

My first point, then, is about my support for pension dashboards. It is vital that we can ensure that people make informed decisions about their futures. I support the pension dashboard provisions in the Bill, because it is absolutely right that we ensure that, as people come to make decisions about their livelihoods and their future and how they are going to ensure it is sustainable, they have the information available. It has been interesting to hear, as a member of the Work and Pensions Committee, how that work has progressed. There is still more to do in this space, though, and that is recognised across the board. Nevertheless, I think we can all agree that it is vital that savers have the freedom to make choices in an informed way.

I want to turn to scams, which has been an overarching point today, particularly in relation to protecting the most vulnerable. I have some sympathy with the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee—perhaps I can call him my right honourable friend—when he talks about the red flag approach. We have heard evidence, summed up by my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge, of the disastrous effect that these scams have on ordinary working people and how people can lose their livelihoods as a result of someone who comes across as their friend and says to them, “Ignore the warning signs. Of course they are going to say that to you. Of course they are going to tell you not to do it, but it is a risk. Go on—do it.” I absolutely support, and we cannot stop, the freedom of savers to make that choice because I am fundamentally of the view that the person who knows best how to run their own life is the individual themselves, but ensuring that the safeguards are there is vital. I am heartened that the Minister is in a listening mood on this point and I hope that, as the Bill progresses, that listening mood continues. I am sure, from his comments today, that it absolutely will.

We have heard today some interesting evidence about what happens when the scams are finished. The right hon. Member for East Ham made a really good point about Mr R, who lost all that money and now has £1,000 compensation. When it comes to recovery funds and compensating people who have lost out, it is difficult. Ultimately, a lot of the time we are hearing that people are still left in absolutely dreadful positions, so I am heartened by the Minister’s approach. I look forward to hearing, as the Bill progresses and work continues, about the work that the Government will do more widely on this point, because that does not stop here with this Bill. We have all acknowledged that work to protect consumers from these scams and discussions with regulators will carry on as we continue.

I am supportive of and really heartened by the regulatory enforcement and the increased penalties, increased sentences and custodial sentences that are in place. That is absolutely right, because it is important that people cannot be seen to be allowed to get away with this, and they should not be. We need to support consumers who, at the end of the day, are relying on us getting this right.

I briefly want to touch on the point about climate change. My right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom), who is not in her place, made the point about ensuring that we encourage funds to invest in new green technology. Green technology is going to be a vital part of what I call the “industrial flourishment”, particularly in an area such as mine in the Black Country. I am really fortunate to have in my area groups such as the midland housing group that has been pioneering fuel cell—battery cell—technology some 23 years before it has actually been used, and it is investment in technologies such as that that will power through the economic revival as we come out of this pandemic and crisis.

I want to keep my comments relatively brief today, because we have had some fantastic, very well-thought-out contributions. Broadly, I am really happy with the cross-party support for the Bill. I definitely think that there are some probing discussions to be had as a result of the debate today, not least on scams and how we protect some of the most vulnerable consumers. In communities such as mine, particularly in areas such as Wednesbury, Tipton and Oldbury, we have some of the most vulnerable individuals who rely on some of these schemes. They are not wealthy people. They are not people who can ignore their pension pots. They are people ultimately who rely on their savings to get them through their later life, so we need to make sure that we protect my constituents in those areas, and I look forward to working with the Government particularly on that point.

Pension Schemes Bill [ Lords ] (Second sitting)

Shaun Bailey Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 3rd November 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Guy Opperman]

I explained this at great length earlier, but I will attempt to repeat what I said. I will jump through the verification hoops. The reality is that an individual gets verification and the information passes from the pension finder service to the connected pension schemes asking them to match the individual’s information. The pension scheme finds a match and confirms it to the pension finder service, which responds to the individual via their chosen dashboard saying that it holds the data. When the individual next logs on to their dashboard, the information from the pension scheme will be viewable by the individual. I drew the analogy of the cashpoint, which, I suggest, is the appropriate analogy, whereby if I bank with Barclays and I withdraw from an HSBC account, Barclays does not know what is in my account. That is the process by which we are trying to proceed.

[Shaun Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Con)]

On a slightly parallel point, with the advent of open banking, we had similar discussions on sharing data and the fears around how it might be used commercially. What we have seen is that, with a robust regime and buy-in from many of the stakeholders, it seems to have worked. Many of the fears that were advanced then and that have been articulated today have not really come to fruition. Does my hon. Friend agree that while we can talk about the legislation, it is the buy-in from stakeholders that will ensure that this succeeds?

[Guy Opperman]

There is no question: we are deliberately learning the lessons from open banking and the process whereby we took all our various bank accounts and made them accessible under a strict regulatory regime so that our rights were not infringed. There is now a massively enhanced consumer programme that empowers the consumer, drives down costs and does all the other things that we know open banking does. With great respect, I suggest that that is a very good example.

The big difference is that in open banking we are dealing with a relatively small number of banks in this country, unlike in, say, America, whereas with pensions we are dealing with 40,000 different schemes. But the principles are exactly the same. We have learned from the regulatory process and I have met the chief executive of Open Banking. My officials and the dashboard delivery team are engaging with them. No disrespect, but the problems that the Committee has rightly identified today are exactly the same sort of problems that were identified with open banking. These are the same consumer protection organisations, and I shall come to the approach of Which?, which is probably the No. 1 consumer protection organisation in the country. It is firmly on the side of the Government and disagrees with the amendment. My hon. Friend drew me to that.

Pension Schemes Bill [Lords]

Shaun Bailey Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Monday 16th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Shaun Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and all the other speakers in this thoughtful and well considered debate. It was also a pleasure to serve on the Public Bill Committee; it is great to see so many of its members in the Chamber today. I pay tribute to the Clerks and staff on that Committee as well as to right hon. and hon. Members across the House for their work, diligence and patience in taking part in that Committee.

I am going to focus my comments predominantly on new clause 1, which was introduced by the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms)—the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, on which I also serve. I pay tribute to the right hon. Gentleman for his fantastic work in chairing that Committee over the past six months. He has been an absolutely fantastic and very diligent, hard-working Chair.

To focus on the scams point for a minute, I should say that scams often come from the fact that people have not had advice, and those at not the bottom end but what would perhaps be classed as the normal end of the market are most exposed by not having access to advice. Given the comments in the Chamber so far, I think we can all agree with the principle that everyone needs access to advice. We need to ensure that people are informed as they make these life-changing decisions. From our casework and the evidence that the Select Committee has heard about people who have lost their savings—the money that they have accrued over years and years—we know the impact of not having the advice. We know the importance of ensuring that the advice is there.

I agree in principle with the underlying purpose of the new clause, but I question whether primary legislation is the right place for it. There could be a place for it within the secondary regulations that will be needed as part of the process to ensure that people have access to correct advice.

I absolutely agree with the comments about the Pension Wise service; we have heard how fantastic and well received that has been. People have genuinely been impacted by their exposure and access to the Pension Wise service. There is definitely a role for the service to play—there is no doubt about that at all. The fact that 72% of people who access the service change their decision shows clearly that advice has to be central to pension planning as we go forward.

The people most vulnerable to scams are those who most need the advice—they do not have humungous pension pots to fall back on or above-£30,000 pots they can transfer; these are ordinary working people who need the advice. I am thinking of the people in my constituency, in places such as Tipton, Wednesbury and Oldbury—people who have worked for 40 years at CLM Construction in Oldbury, for example. They have paid into a scheme and now want to draw from it; they are the ordinary working people who rely on the advice.

The Minister has given assurances that he will take a listening approach when considering the secondary regulations—I am sure that in summing up he will discuss what that means, not that I want to give him any more work to do in what will have to be an extensive summing up. I feel that it is there that the spirit of what the new clause is trying to achieve can really be brought to life. I agree with what many right hon. and hon. Members have said: there is a wider debate to have about how we ensure that those on the ordinary end of the scale, who do not have humungous pension pots but have worked hard for what they have got, get that advice.

The logistical challenges that my hon. Friend the Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Mr Vara) outlined in his intervention—he is not in his place now, because of social distancing—can be challenged effectively. This is an interesting proposition, and I do commend the right hon. Member for East Ham for the work he has done, because I do think there is a place for it. However, we need to have such debates on secondary regulations to really get into the nuts and bolts of how this operates and how this works, so that we can get this right.

We also have to remember—this has been picked up as well—that there is an existing regime with how the FCA operates. It sends out guidance when someone is two months from their 50th birthday and so on. That is not to say it is perfect; we know it is not perfect. It is not advice as would want to see it; it is a fact sheet that people are then left to interpret as they wish. It is not where we want to get to. I think we agree with where we want to get to—the destination—but it is just the mechanics of how we do that. From that perspective, I agree with the principle of new clause 1, but I think there is a better place for how we do this. I absolutely commend the principle behind it—at its core, it is fundamentally about ensuring that people have access to the right advice to make informed decisions to ensure they protect the money and what they have built up through hard work—because it is absolutely essential.

I am very conscious of time, but if I may, I will turn very quickly to amendment 16 which is to clause 124. My hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Gareth Davies)—I absolutely commend him, by the way, for the work he has done on green finance and the green gilt work he has done—covered this so well that he has taken most of the points I wished to add. However, I will just re-emphasise one point he made about the unintentional consequences particularly of divestment.

Many of the organisations that perhaps would be impacted by this are actually the organisations that we need to lead on these new green challenges. As part of my research, I looked at some of the organisations that we might think of as ones that may need to be divested from. We looked at the oil companies like Shell, BP, Texaco and so on, and the work they have done—for example, that of Shell on biofuels, or BP on renewable energy in homes. I claim no interest—people can google it, see it and find it—but I think we risk a real unintentional consequence here of actually going backwards and almost shooting ourselves a bit, because by divesting from those schemes we inhibit the work that we need to solve this climate crisis.

In concluding my remarks, I think the principle of new clause 1 is absolutely right, but I think there is more to be done on the mechanics, and the place for this is in the debate on the secondary regulations and making sure that we absolutely drill down into this. I am reassured by my hon. Friend the Minister’s reassurances on how he is going to approach that. On amendment 16, I think there are some real unintended consequences that, if we are not careful, could actually take us backwards, not forwards.

[Ms Angela Eagle]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for West Bromwich West (Shaun Bailey) in this reasonably consensual debate.

Madam Deputy Speaker, there is nothing like seeing men rushing into the Chamber in hazmat suits to ensure that we are as brief as we possibly can be, even though—and this is no criticism of the Chair—the grouping of these amendments means we have rather a lot of things to refer to in this gigantic group. One of the things I am going to do is to refer only in passing to new clause 1, because so much has already been said about it, and to concentrate a bit more of my remarks on the pensions dashboard and some of the amendments there, because that has not really received much attention in the comments we have had so far.

There are some themes that are really important to bear in mind in this whole group and in the Bill that we are discussing today. The first is strengthening consumer protections, which is what new clause 1 is about, and ensuring that when people are making a decision about probably some of the largest amount of funds they have laid aside for their entire lives in savings, and they are going to make decisions about what to do with that money that are irreparable, they do not get their heads turned by a slick advertising at one end and con artists at the other end, and that they get enough time, space and consideration to make the choice that is right for them.

Our pensions landscape is very complex, and it is getting more and more complex as it matures, changes and evolves. We are left trying to deal in legislation with DB schemes, DC schemes and CDC schemes, which we all welcome, but all these changes and innovations over time make the pensions landscape difficult for people to navigate. As we all know, consumer protections are quite weak, and the introduction of so-called pension freedoms in 2014 increased the chances for mis-selling and scams, so we have to be very careful. That is why I support new clause 1. I support any protections that will make it slightly more inconvenient for people to shift their money and that will reassure regulators, providers and customers of pensions that this decision is the right one for them, because, as we have heard, it is irreparable.

I do not agree with those who have said that we have enough protection against scams. The cost of losing a pension is huge and irreparable. The risks for scammers and con artists are quite low, but the minimum rewards are huge. Because our capacity to deal with fraud in this country has been eaten away, meaning that it is not nearly as good as it should be and needs to be improved massively, the chances of scammers being caught are quite low too. The potential for high rewards from conning people out of their life savings versus the risks taken means that we are a magnet for scammers.

What we have to do—and what the Bill begins to do—is try to close some of those loopholes. That is what amendments 2 to 5 are about. It is also about regulating superfunds, which is covered in new clause 6, and creating the new criminal offences that we all agreed with in Committee, to try to strengthen regulation, put up some real barriers and increase the risk that those who are trying to con people out of their pensions will be caught. I support amendments 2 to 5, as well as new clause 6, which is about regulating superfunds.

The introduction of the pensions dashboard is one of the things that will mark the Bill as an important piece of pensions legislation. I commend the Minister for all the work he has done to create the capacity for pensions dashboards to be introduced, so that information can be collected from disparate places and presented in a way that is meaningful to consumers. We are now trying to make the pensions dashboard more useful and important and to ensure that it is introduced in a way that does not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Amendments 11, 13, 14 and 15 are about how the dashboard should work. While I commend the Minister for the huge amount of work he has done, he has unfortunately overturned some of the amendments made in the other place on the dashboard. One of those amendments would have ensured that the first dashboard introduced was the publicly provided objective one, which would have a year to bed in before other commercially offered dashboards were introduced. The other place decided that that would be a good thing to do. The Minister and his Government have decided—he gave us explanations in Committee—that it would not be, and that he wants multifarious dashboards to crop up all over the place, some of which are commercially offered, and some of which I think would just confuse the situation.