It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field). A number of the companies that would be affected by these reforms are in his constituency.
One of the issues around pensions is complexity. The coalition Government, following on from what Labour had started with the Turner consensus, were beginning to simplify things and make them more understandable and to make pensions something that younger people talked about, as well as people who had already reached pension age and therefore had a direct interest in the money they were receiving each week or month. However, my concern about the more recent proposed changes both in the Budget proposals and this Bill is that they are adding more complexity back into the system and making it even more confusing for consumers. While it may on the surface be a great thing that there is going to be pension liberalisation and that people will not automatically have to buy an annuity, there are also certain risks in that.
The hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster mentioned some of the concerns, as did the shadow Minister. If people found pensions too confusing and did not always know with surety that they were buying the best product, how will making even more products available and taking away some of the constraints on what they can choose make things easier for them? There are fairly major dangers of mis-selling and of products being offered that are not fit for purpose unless the governance is right and the regulation is correct. That is a very real fear, and I certainly have that fear about the changes that would allow people to access their pension pot more easily at an earlier age without putting any constraints on how it might be
invested. The hon. Gentleman made the point that, in building up that pot, most have enjoyed tax relief on their subscriptions, and the understanding was that that tax relief was to encourage them to make sure they had retirement savings. However, if they turn their retirement savings into just savings, why would those savings get an extra allowance in the form of tax relief? Future Governments might be tempted to look at that whole area of tax relief.
The Minister said that we had a binary model at the moment, and he is absolutely right. We have either defined-contributions schemes or defined-benefits schemes. The Bill will introduce an extra layer. If we ask people whether they would like to share the risk, they will say yes. Even companies might think it a good idea, but it is open to question whether companies will take advantage of the provisions in the Bill to set up a defined-ambition scheme. The Minister said that there was an appetite for this kind of reform, but I am not so sure that people are clamouring at his door—or at anyone else’s—saying that they are desperate to have collective, defined-contribution schemes. I concede that, from a consumer point of view, the members might want such schemes, but it will be the employers, not the members, who will be setting up the pension funds and schemes.
The Minister admitted earlier that it was unlikely that those affected by the legislation would be small and medium-sized enterprises, and that it was more likely to affect bigger companies. We know, however, from the roll-out of auto-enrolment that most of the bigger companies are already enrolled in the auto-enrolment scheme, and that the SMEs have still to enrol. They are the ones that have more choice, because they are having to set up the scheme from scratch. Perhaps this legislation has come a bit too late for the people who wanted to take advantage of this offer. I am still puzzled as to who the Minister envisages taking advantage of it. Perhaps he will tell us when he winds up the debate.
I am still not 100% sure how all this will fit in with auto-enrolment. I am still unclear as to how it will work in practice. I also do not understand how, in a scheme with collective risk, we can work out what people would get if they wanted to take their pension pot with them under the liberalisation arrangements. I am not clear how the two would fit together, although I have raised these matters with the Minister in the past.
There is an inherent tension between the different parts of the pensions system, and it has been introduced by the Government, even though they were on the right track and things were going quite well. The Minister was quite dismissive when I suggested he pay tribute to the last Government for accepting the Turner recommendations and for legislating for auto-enrolment. He suggested that that had not been good enough and that his Government had done all sorts of other things, but what we did was part of the process. He said that there had been no reform of the state pension, even though that had been part of the Turner proposals that the last Government were introducing, but who can say what another Labour Government might have done?
Other matters that the Minister mentioned had been recommended by the Select Committee. I would love to take credit for those recommendations on behalf of the Committee, and I would like to think that they have had some influence on the Minister, particularly with regard to protecting consumers from high costs and charges. I
hope that any other Government would have made a similarly sensible decision, so let us not suggest that only the coalition could possibly have introduced such measures, given that they did not fit in with the consensus that had been built up. So far, so good: things were getting simpler and easier to understand, but the proposals in the Budget threw everything up into the air again.
It was interesting to hear what the Minister said about the need for a single regulator. The Select Committee has made that proposal on a number of occasions. The Minister’s admission that he is coming round to that view, and that he had not wanted to introduce the proposal because the Government had only just set up the Financial Conduct Authority, suggests that the last reform of the regulator was perhaps a bit botched. As a result, we cannot get what we need—namely, a separate regulator. There is absolutely no doubt that if we go ahead with defined-ambition schemes and collective defined-contributions schemes, it will be imperative that people know who is regulating which bits of their pension. This is an incredibly complex area, but it is important for people to know who they can complain to.
Governance will be an important matter, and I, too, was dismayed to discover that there were no details of it in the Bill. My hon. Friend the shadow Minister said that those details would be introduced through secondary legislation. Governance is important in all pension schemes, but it is even more important in this instance. The fact that there are no details for Parliament to scrutinise is particularly worrying.
Another matter that I find particularly worrying is the absence from the Bill of information on the guidance guarantee. I had expected such details to be in the Bill by now but they are not, which worries me even more because the Government are obviously still working them out. My concern is about this coming later in amendments. We are already on Second Reading and I worry whether it will be worked out properly by the time the Bill goes into Committee for proper scrutiny. I wonder what the difficulties are—I suspect there are a lot, as a result.
As a result of all that, the Bill is vague, in an area that does not need to be or should not be vague—it is too important for that. Although the principle of defined ambition or collective defined contribution schemes is a good one, and I think we would all welcome the sharing of risk, it is hard to see who is going to be supplying these products and who will sign up to them, because at the moment it is much easier for people to understand the binary model, of which the Minister was critical.
I received a communication from the Law Society of Scotland, which has some concerns and questions about the Bill. I wonder whether I might mention them now, so that by the time the Minister sums up he might have some replies. I do not know how difficult the questions are but I will go through them, as the LSS has obviously sought clarification on certain points. Is it the intention that shared-risk schemes will cover existing schemes or only new ones? That should be an easy enough question for the Minister to answer. The definition of a pensions promise in the context of shared-risk schemes refers to factors “other than longevity”, so does that mean that these promises with an element of longevity are exempt, or does the promise have to be entirely based on longevity? Guaranteed annuity options or rates are based on longevity
but also on factors such as long-term gilt yields. Is it the intention that the annuity quotes are included under the definition of a pensions promise? The definition of shared-risk schemes talks about promises made
“at a time before the benefit comes into payment”.
Does “come into payment” mean when an annuity is set up or when the first payment is made? Would third party promises include an arrangement whereby the insurer, as opposed to the scheme, made the promise? If the LSS is asking those questions, I suspect they may be ones that others also want answered.
Most of the briefings we received from various organisations and companies were generally supportive of the principle of defined ambition, but we all accepted and agreed on the principle of universal credit, and look where that has got us. The Government should not necessarily say, “Oh well, everybody supports it in principle, so everything is all right.” It is part of the role of a Select Committee to look at this. I know the Minister will be appearing before us at some point—perhaps he does not know this yet—certainly before November, to talk about the progress on auto-enrolment. One key thing for both the Government and the Select Committee is the success of auto-enrolment; it has to succeed simply because it is too big and too important for it not to do so. At that time I hope he will be able to answer some of the questions I have raised about the interplay between auto-enrolment, defined ambition and the changes introduced by the Treasury on pensions liberalisation, as well as the other questions we will have. I look forward to the Minister’s appearance before us in due course.
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