I thank my noble friend. Of course, he is absolutely right but the point of the dashboard is that much younger people can plan their future pension income. The current procedure is to encourage people to log on to the state pension checker, where they can verify their future predicted state pension income so that, as they get into their 50s and closer to retirement, they will be able to make more meaningful financial planning. However, as my noble friend Lord Young pointed out, there are significant security concerns with the current gateway system that allows you to find out what your state pension is. Therefore, if we want the state pension to be on the dashboard, we will need a certain level of security.
The aims of the amendments are correct. We want to be able to see the state pension and a comprehensive list of pensions, but I caution against trying to go more broadly. I also caution against commercial dashboards which might use their own IT systems that lock people out of checking their pensions on other providers’ systems and which try to encourage people to merge their pensions. Indeed, we have seen that the
systems of some pension providers do not always flag up the guarantees that can be very valuable for individuals. If people are being not advised but merely guided, or if it is merely information and they are not aware of the guarantees, they could lose out and have no comeback.