Asked by: Gordon Marsden (Labour - Blackpool South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether the performance of the Pensions Regulator is assessed in relation to trends in (a) take-up of workplace pensions and (b) anticipated retirement income from current workplace pension accounts.
Answered by Steve Webb
The Pensions Regulator pursues five main objectives as set out in section 5 of the Pensions Act 2004. These objectives include the protection of benefits to the members of work-based pensions schemes. The Pensions Regulator's key performance indicators are designed to operate in support of its statutory objectives.
Asked by: Gordon Marsden (Labour - Blackpool South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the rationale was for the provisions in the Pensions Bill which allow employers to differentiate pension conditions between previous public sector employees now working in privatised companies and protected persons.
Answered by Steve Webb
The Pensions Bill creates a statutory override designed to allow employers, to a very limited extent, to make changes to the scheme to recover the increased cost of National Insurance that follows from the introduction of the single tier pension.
Protected persons are a small group of individuals (approximately 60,000) employed in some formerly nationalised industries, namely rail, including Transport for London, electricity, coal, nuclear waste and decommissioning, where the employers are limited in their ability to change scheme rules by legislation made at the time of privatisation. This legislation prevents employers from making changes to the pension benefits offered to those employees who were previously employed by the State. The Pensions Bill reaffirms that restriction.
This is a very different situation to other privatisations where a trust deed, rules or other undertaking was made at the time of privatisation, which was not endorsed by Parliament in the same way.
The important distinction we have made is that where duties to restrict changes to the future pension rights of specific workers, in specific industries have been enshrined in law and endorsed by Parliament, the statutory override should not allow employers to disregard that legislation.
It should also be noted that contractual agreements between public sector organisations and third parties, which may provide pension protection for staff now working in private companies, are not affected by the statutory override
Asked by: Gordon Marsden (Labour - Blackpool South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment he has made of whether an individual on the minimum wage for a full working lifetime will receive a higher retirement income under the new single tier pension system than under the existing pension system.
Answered by Steve Webb
It is not possible to answer this question, as in order to calculate how much state pension an individual may receive in retirement under the single-tier system, compared to the current system, it is necessary to make a considerable number of assumptions. For instance: when they reach State Pension age, whether they have been contracted-out of the Additional Pension, or how many years they live after retirement.
Chapter 3 of the Single Tier Impact Assessment provides a detailed commentary on factors that are likely to influence whether someone is a notional gainer or loser compared to the current system.