Draft Occupational Pension Schemes (Administration, Investment, Charges and Governance) and Pensions Dashboards (Amendment) Regulations 2023

George Eustice Excerpts

Wednesday 8th March 2023 General Committees

[Laura Trott]

Yes, absolutely. When I come back with the regulations, I can provide an update on the spending. I reassure the hon. Gentleman that part of what the reset is doing is looking at the expenditure to ensure that it is in hand. I will have more to say about that when we come back.

The shadow Minister mentioned NI numbers, and that is one of the things we need to look at again. It is really important. I have had representations from industry about this, and I had a meeting on it this week. It should potentially be incorporated, and that is part of what we are looking at as part of the reset programme.

[George Eustice (Camborne and Redruth) (Con)]

I note from the explanatory memorandum that there was another set of regulations in 2021—the Occupational Pension Schemes (Administration, Investment, Charges and Governance) (Amendment) Regulations 2021—which introduced some initial easements. Why do the Government think those were insufficient? It is not that long ago, so it seems quite soon to make changes again. Was there an oversight in not making the full change last time, or is it the case that we now have enough evidence to know that those regulations did not work?

[Laura Trott]

We are definitely taking this a step further now. In my time as pensions Minister, I have tried to really focus on the value for money, rather than the charges, and that is a shift. We are a step further into our automatic enrolment journey. We now see that we have the coverage, which is really positive, but we need to improve adequacy. In my time as pensions Minister, I will really focus on that and getting returns to savers so they can build up their pot. It can make a massive difference to how effective someone’s ultimate retirement pot is in giving them the retirement they want, and this is another step in that direction. It has been a journey, and this is additional to what we have done previously.