I will be very brief in my support of the amendment that stands in my name and the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt).
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I want to start by picking up on my hon. Friend’s last point. In a way, it is a contribution to a wider debate on later life planning and how we ensure that people look at their later life in the round in terms of the assets available to them to support a quality of life they want, and to meet the unforeseen eventualities that life can throw up, not least care needs. My hon. Friend referred to innovation in the market and, in particular, to Partnership. It has been one of the leading providers of immediate needs annuities, a product that I suspect is unaffected by these changes but which makes a significant difference to those who want certainty in meeting care
costs, particularly in residential settings. It can often mean that people never fall back on the state. This product therefore has a double benefit: it protects the individual and the taxpayer too.
I want to pick up on remarks the Minister made in Committee on 4 November. He talked about two phases in the way the guidance guarantee is delivered: gathering relevant information, which my hon. Friend talked about; and the follow-up phase. Of course, between those two phases there is the conversation phase, where the information that has been gathered is used to best effect. The Minister said that information gathered would include housing asset information, but suggested that it would be part of a standardised format. He implied that it would be developed over time. The issue is, therefore, how much time it will take to be developed and how standardised it will be from the outset. Evidence was presented to the Committee at the beginning of its deliberations on the relative share of wealth attributable to defined contribution savings compared with the significant share of wealth that is represented, particularly among the first cohorts of populations that are going to benefit, which is property wealth. There is a vital need not to leave that asset out of the equation. The figure I have seen most recently for the 60 to 69-year age group is that they have property wealth of about £993 billion—that is an extraordinary figure—and three quarters of them are mortgage-free.
Building other assets, particularly housing assets, into the information-gathering stage, the conversation and the follow-up is essential. The anxiety that has given rise to the amendment is that it was not entirely clear from what the Minister said in Committee whether all three phases would need to take them fully into account. I hope the Minister can give us both the reassurance we seek. I hope the statutory guidance is the place where this is properly dealt with and that it conveys clearly the way all three phases of the guidance guarantee are delivered to ensure that housing wealth is properly taken into account and followed up. People will then be able to make informed choices that support them and their families, enabling them to have the later lives they want. That will not be delivered solely by focusing on defined contribution savings.
I support the amendment. It is intended to probe and secure clarification from the Government clarification. I look forward to that clarification.