My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Bradley, sought a number of assurances about the funding of the guidance and the knock-on effects that this will have on CABs. The Treasury is committed to the provision
of high-quality guidance from the start. It has the power in line 12 of page 65, in proposed new Section 333B:
“The Treasury must take such steps as they consider appropriate to ensure that people have access to pensions guidance”.
Given that when we say “pensions guidance” we mean high-quality pensions guidance, that means that there is a legal requirement on the Treasury to will the means as well as the ends.
In terms of the scale of the challenge ahead, we estimate that approximately 300 guidance providers are going to be required, including the CABs, the telephone appointments and the website, and we are actively recruiting them. The funding that the CABs are getting is the subject of continuous discussions between the Treasury and the CABs. I gather that, for the moment at least, the CABs feel that that they are getting the resources they need to do the job that they have been asked to do without any deflection of their core grant and without there being any requirement to fund this from other sources of income that they receive. That is very much the Treasury’s intention behind the whole approach to the scheme.
There has been start-up funding, which the CABs and the other guidance providers have been receiving. The £20 million development fund was announced in the Budget, of which a £10 million advance was approved by Parliament last July to cover preparatory work, most of which is taking the form of grants to the delivery partners. As I said earlier this afternoon, we estimate that there will be a cost of £35 million in the next financial year, and the Treasury is committed to increasing the amount that is made available if the demand for the service warrants it. I hope that, with those assurances, the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.