Pension Schemes Bill [HL]

Lord Naseby Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 1st November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a trustee of the Parliamentary Contributory Pension Fund, which is in sound condition. I welcome the Bill immensely. I pay tribute to my noble friend on the Front Bench for all he has done in this field over the years, and what it seems he still has to do in the future.

More important than my welcome is that I read that last week a panel of master trust providers at the conference of the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association also welcomed the Bill. That seems to be a good start. The providers also said at that conference that it should ensure that those schemes that are not sufficiently robust will have to leave the market—quite rightly so—but they even volunteered that maybe the industry should be the catalyst to look after those members who find themselves belonging to such a trust. I hope very much that by mentioning this here publicly they will do what they said they were thinking about doing.

I was also pleased to see that the Pension and Lifetime Savings Association has set up a committee solely for master trusts to help them have strategies, to move them forward and to support them in more difficult times. That can only be in the interests of the pensioners themselves, for they are the people we are most concerned about.

Looking at the Bill, of course one looks at the role of the Pensions Regulator—TPR. Will he be given real powers under the Bill to authorise and to de-authorise? Authorisation will, as I understand it, examine every aspect of a master trust, because those master trusts will become the key providers for the development of a defined contribution pension market. There is a question of whether TPR will have adequate resources for the work that is defined for it in the Bill. I hope that there will be a thorough assessment. One recognises that it is the pensioner who will pay the bill. Nevertheless, let us at least start with an analysis of whether those who are charged with these important responsibilities are to be given sufficient resources to meet them.

I have a number of questions to ask of my noble friend. First, why is there no de minimis capital requirement for any master trust entering the market? Secondly, why under the licensing scheme is it not compulsory to use the master trust assurance framework? Thirdly, your Lordships will know of my deep interest in and support for the mutuals sector. There are many schemes out there today for groups of employers in the not-for-profit sector—for churches, charities, unions, universities, credit unions and a number of others. They usually have a defined benefit scheme and as far as I can see, having been involved with the movement for many years now, almost all those are in reasonable shape. Surely it is questionable whether it is really sensible, or indeed necessary, to include them in the master trust legislation, for they are pretty safe schemes. It seems to me that the regulations will be unnecessarily onerous, complex and really quite expensive for some of these small operations. If we demand that they have to comply with them, it will create great difficulty for a sector that, as I understand it, society wants to see promoted.

My fourth question will not find much favour with my noble friend. It is on that section of Part 2 of the Bill regarding which my noble friend reiterated the Government’s intention to introduce a cap on early exit charges. As far as the media are concerned, that is a highly emotive area. However, for the poor people who are running a pension fund and doing their calculations based on the income of that fund over 20, 25 or 30 years, or whatever it may be, making it easy for the individual member to exit the fund will make it even more difficult to plan in relation to yields in the market. Are the Government absolutely sure that they want to dig away here? We certainly cannot have a situation where the early exit charge is what one might call de minimis. There has to be a disincentive against people going in and then pulling out; otherwise—as someone who has been involved with pension fund management for 25 years—my judgment is that it will be quite a challenge, and not one that I would personally wish to take on.

So much for the questioning. I think the House will know and need to recognise that we have a long way to go in the pensions market in this nation. Today, it is estimated that just one in seven of the members of DC schemes are saving enough to maintain in retirement the lifestyle that they have got used to. There is a huge challenge for all of us—for the Government of the day, the media and the industry—to explain and convince pensioners that they must do more saving for their future life as pensioners. In my judgment, that has considerable implications for Her Majesty’s Treasury in providing some incentives to make this happen.

As this is the Second Reading of a pensions Bill I would like to comment on a couple of wider aspects. First, as I understand it, there are currently 5,945 defined benefit schemes. Your Lordships will have read, as have I, that most of those defined benefit schemes are in a negative situation. The deficits amount to billions of pounds. To make it even worse, or more lurid, the Pensions Institute at the London Cass Business School has forecast that 1,000 more pension funds will enter the Pension Protection Fund. Your Lordships will know that the level of the deficit is calculated using traditional gilts plus or corporate bond yields to calculate the discount rate. As we all know, those yields are at a very depressed level and have been for a while now.

I was interested to read something that I believe reflects the situation. First Actuarial has just done an analysis of the expected returns from underlying assets held by schemes as opposed to the theoretical system using traditional gilts plus and corporate bond yields. The net result was completely different. There turns out to be a surplus of £358 billion. We need to think long and hard about whether we will stick in the longer term with the totally unrealistic discount rate that we have had over the last decades.

My second and more general point is about when schemes face a wind-up situation. The time has come to look at changing the law. Today, it is not in the best interests of members. If they cannot afford to meet their pension promises, the only option left to the trustees and the company is to go bankrupt. The net result is that the poor pensioners get a very meagre—certainly a substantially reduced—pension from the PPF, so they lose out, and the equity shareholders in the company lose out because they lose all their equity. Why cannot trustees be allowed to renegotiate? It would result in a reduction in benefits to the members, but not as big a reduction as they get when they have to be put in the last chance saloon of the PPF. Perhaps some combination of cutting benefits and a modified new DC scheme on top of that would be a better way forward for a number of those companies—possibly not all of them, but certainly a significant element of the thousands that the Cass Business School forecasts will be in really deep trouble. A significant element of them would be saved, and that would help pensioners.

I greatly welcome the Bill. We face many new challenges in this market. I am sure the Bill will be given a Second Reading, and I look forward to playing some role in the Committee stage as we move it forward.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, reminded your Lordships that he had form in this area after being a Minister in the DWP at the beginning of the century. Two can play at that game. I was a Minister in the DHSS, as it then was, from 1979 to 1981, since when there have been many changes.

We have just had a three-hour masterclass on pensions policy, much of it about master trusts but also covering much wider issues. I am grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in a fascinating and, for me, very illuminating debate about the range of possibilities in this vital area.

Much of the debate was supportive of what we are doing, although a significant part of the discussion raised issues of concern. From the point of view of Ministers in charge of the Bill, the good news is that the supportive comments were about what is actually in the Bill and the less supportive comments were about what is not in the Bill, but those are serious concerns, which I hope to say a word or two about as we go through. I want to focus on the issues raised by what is in the Bill. I know that any of the issues that I do not have time to deal with will be dealt with in Committee.

The Bill’s midwife was my noble friend Lady Altmann, and I am very sorry that she is not winding up this debate herself, when she would be able to answer the many questions that she has posed. We are all grateful to her for her work on it, which has enabled us to provide a fit-for-purpose framework for master trusts as auto-enrolment gathers momentum.

The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, made the case for regulation in this area and I am grateful for his support for the Bill. He asked about the timing of the Green Paper. I can go no further than “winter”. Winter is a more broadly defined target than a specific month, and winter is when we plan to publish the Green Paper.

The noble Lord raised a number of issues, including a very important one about the resources of the Pensions Regulator. Indeed, whether the Pensions Regulator would be able to resource itself up to deal with the obligations posed on it by the Bill was a theme raised by a number of noble Lords. The Government and the Pensions Regulator are working together to ensure that the regulator has the resources that are needed. The Pensions Regulator’s resourcing will flow from an annual business planning process developed with input from the DWP, and its budget reflects its agreed priorities. Work has already started on the implications of the new regime we are discussing and will continue as we develop the secondary legislation.

With regard to the initial peak as master trusts apply for authorisation, that work has been anticipated and provision has been made in the Bill to cover the costs of processing the applications for authorisation through a one-off fee. I can confirm that the pots are protected from the date that the Bill was introduced, assuming it becomes law. If a master trust fails before it is authorised, the beneficiaries are protected and there is also a cap on the charges.

The noble Lords, Lord McKenzie and Lord Hunt, and others raised the issue of communication with members. I have some sympathy with the point that has been made. I do not want to go beyond my negotiating brief, but it is important that where it is practical the beneficiaries of auto-enrolment should have some idea of what is going on, and I would like to think about how we might do that within the constraints of the Bill.

The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, and others raised the issue of the earnings trigger for automatic enrolment. It is not actually aligned with the personal income tax threshold but we review the earnings trigger annually, paying particular attention to the impact of this on groups currently underrepresented in pension saving, such as women and low earners, mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis. This year’s review for the trigger for 2017-18 will consider how to get the balance right between the importance of saving for the future and the affordability of pension contributions for those on lower incomes. At this stage, as noble Lords will understand, I cannot pre-empt the outcome of the review.

There was much comment about the regulations and questions were asked about when we might see them. I take on board the point that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, has just made. The timing of formal consultation on draft regulations depends on a number of factors. At the moment, we anticipate that the initial consultation to inform the regulations may take place in autumn 2017, but I was impressed by what was said during the debate about whether there might be more involvement at an earlier stage.

A number of noble Lords raised the issue of transparency and where we are on the consultation which took place on that last year. The Government remain committed to improving transparency through the disclosure of transaction costs, and on 4 October the FCA published a consultation proposing requirements on asset managers to disclose information about transaction costs to trustees and independent governance committees. We are working closely with the FCA and await the outcome of this consultation with interest. Pending its outcome, we will then consult on the onward disclosure of costs and charges to members.

The noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, mentioned the importance of building and maintaining confidence in master trusts—a theme that ran through the debate. He made a good point about the impact of volatility in the movement of interest rates on deficits. I would like to say a word about that in a moment.

On pension advice, as my noble friend Lord Freud said when introducing the debate, we are consulting on how we get that right. Public financial guidance is an important issue for both the Treasury and the DWP. Ministers in both departments are working towards a common goal to ensure that consumers can access the help that they need to make effective financial decisions. We intend to consult later this year and that document will, as my noble friend said in his opening speech, include proposals for a single guidance body and its governance structure. In the meantime, the Money Advice Service, the Pensions Advisory Service and Pension Wise will continue business as usual.

The noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, raised an interesting point about portability. I do not have the answer but given how many people move jobs, it is an interesting question: what happens to the auto-enrolment with a particular employer which they started with? I would like to reflect on that point.

Related to what I said earlier about communication with members, member engagement has been quite a challenging area in which to legislate. We will return to this in later debates. Although they are not specified in the Bill, there are apparently existing powers in relation to communication. I would like to take that forward, as I said a few moments ago.

My noble friend Lord Naseby welcomed the Bill but asked why there was not a de minimis level of capital adequacy. The answer is that we have got to the same destination but taken a slightly different route by looking at financial sustainability. As a number of noble Lords raised this point, it is perhaps worth clarifying how the regulator will determine how much funding a scheme has to hold before it gets authorised. The regulator, taking account of members’ interests and the circumstances of the master trust as set out in its business plan, will have to be satisfied that the scheme has adequate resources available to meet its set-up costs and running costs, particularly until it reaches break-even point, and to cover the cost of complying with its continuity strategy and legislative requirements, should the scheme have a triggering event. This includes sufficient capital to cover the costs of winding up the scheme without recourse to members’ savings, if this becomes necessary. We think that is a slightly better bespoke model to adopt, rather than a one-size-fits-all model for capital requirement.

My noble friend Lord Naseby also raised a theme which ran through the whole debate, about balancing the freedom of the individual to do what he or she wants with his or her money against the need to make sure that individuals do not run out of funds as they grow older. In that connection, he raised exit charges. I understand that few schemes covered by the Bill have exit charges and I will say a word or two about that in a moment. On his question about the mutual or not-for-profit sector, these are usually defined benefit schemes. As such, they are not subject to the authorisation regime in the Bill.

My noble friend also raised a point, which was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, my noble friend Lord Flight and others, about the impact that changes in interest rates have on the deficit in a pension fund. I was struck by the force of those arguments and wondered whether there was not a better way of measuring this, as my noble friend Lord Flight suggested. You can have a perfectly well-run pension fund that has consistently outperformed the index and has all the liquidity it needs to meet its immediate obligations, with a well-resourced employer standing behind it. But the way that the deficit is measured can mean that, if interest rates go down, a huge deficit may suddenly appear as if from nowhere—with the implications that my noble friend mentioned on dividend policy and investment policy. This issue needs exploring and the Government are responding to these concerns. We will issue a Green Paper over the winter, which will explore this area and seek to stimulate an informed debate on whether government intervention would be helpful, as my noble friend suggested, and whether there are other ways of measuring the deficits in pension funds.

[Lord Naseby]

If my noble friend went back in history he would find that prior to FRS 17, there was a different system. It was a system that looked at the mix a pension fund has and whether that was viable. All the recent work that has just been done— I referred to what one company had done in my speech—proves that it is probably the way forward, so it is not terribly novel. We could dust down what was there before.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I welcome in advance my noble friend’s contribution to the Green Paper that is about to be launched.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, with her background in this area raised a number of points. I think I have nine pages of briefing to deal with all her points; I hope she will understand if I do not go through all of them. She raised a serious point about those on zero-hours contracts, who may have a number of jobs and fall out of the system. There is a wide gateway at the moment to national insurance cover, with the lower earnings limit, and the threshold for access to contributory benefits, including the state pension, is set at the equivalent of less than 16 hours per week at the national living wage. Having made some inquiries as a result of the noble Baroness’s intervention, there is no evidence that this is a growing problem. The number of women working in two or more jobs has hardly changed in the last 10 years—it is around 5% of those in work—and there is always the option of buying into the national insurance scheme if, for whatever reason, you are outside it.

A number of noble Lords raised WASPI. I am only sorry that I cannot be more forthcoming on this than Ministers have been in the past. As your Lordships will know, during the passage of the Pensions Act 2011 a concession was made which slowed down the increase of the state pension age for women so that no one would face an increase of more than 18 months, compared to the increase as part of the Pensions Act 1995. To help older women remain in work, we have abolished the default retirement age and extended the right to request flexible retiring to all employees.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, also raised an interesting proposition about merging ISAs on the one hand and pensions on the other. This is a very radical proposal, as ISAs and pensions have different regimes and objectives. I will need to think about that very radical proposal, with all its implications. Perhaps a debate might take place in the first instance within the Labour Party, to see whether it might mature in that environment. She implied, as others did, that one could not trust people with their pensions. I hope no one wants go back to the old days of having to take out an annuity. My noble friend Lady Altmann made the case for enfranchising people and trusting them to act sensibly with the freedoms that we have given them.

My noble friend Lady Altmann also reminded us of her record in campaigning for reform. As I said, we are very grateful for the offspring, which we are debating today. She mentioned the importance of protecting pension pots from raids. She is quite right that at the moment a pension pot could be raided for wind-up costs. As of the date of publication, assuming the Bill becomes an Act, there is protection. There is also protection from an increase in the percentage taken in charges.

A number of noble Lords asked about the interrelationship between the voluntary framework master trusts have adopted and the statutory framework we are introducing in the Bill. The Bill goes further than the framework of master trusts; it builds on it and builds in added protections. As my noble friend Lord Naseby said, the association of master trusts has welcomed the Bill, which implies that master trusts are able to come to terms with the extra measures they will have to take if they are to be authorised.

Perhaps I may skip over decumulation-only schemes and multi-employer schemes and deal with them in Committee.

My noble friend Lady Altmann asked whether the 1% cap on early exit charges will be confirmed. We are currently considering the level of the cap for occupational schemes as part of our response to public consultation on early exit charges. We intend to publish the response in the coming weeks. My noble friend asked some highly technical questions about definitions, which we can perhaps come to in Committee. She and other noble Lords asked about cold calling and scams. I understand that there will be an announcement in a few weeks’ time. At this stage, I can say no more than that, but I hope it will meet the expectations that have been aroused during this debate.

The noble Lord, Lord Monks, made an interesting point, which I had not expected to hear to from the Benches opposite, about whether NEST, a publicly promoted scheme, is unfair competition to the private sector. It is a good point. NEST is a critical partner in the successful implementation of automatic enrolment. In particular, it is playing a key role in supporting small and micro employers to meet their automatic enrolment responsibilities. It is unique in having a public service obligation. What the noble Lord, Lord Monks, said about the need to build a consensus, the need to move incrementally and the need to win public support for the reforms was spot on.

There was an interesting suggestion about whether there should be a new contribution basis for the low paid of a certain amount per pound rather than a threshold. That is also something I would like to think about.

My noble friend Lady Wheatcroft reminded us of the size of the pot people need to put on one side to cater for their old age and welcomed the impact the Bill will have on protecting the brand of master trusts and ensuring confidence in it. She asked about consolidation. I suspect consolidation is likely. Whether the regulator has a proactive role in promoting it, I am not sure. As implementation comes in in 2018 and a number of master trusts look at the authorisation process, it may well be that they decide to merge with others.

My noble friend also mentioned trustees and asked whether they should have greater powers in the event of a takeover. She will know that the DWP Select Committee is conducting an inquiry into this. We are determined that the regulator should have the powers needed, and if legislation is needed, we will legislate.

I apologise for any discourtesy in curtailing my remarks. My noble friend Lord Flight asked whether there will be an ongoing assessment of financial sustainability. Yes, there will. The noble Baroness, Lady Drake, made a number of very detailed and valuable points, which I look forward to addressing in Committee.

There were concerns about the robustness of the Bill due to its reliance on secondary legislation. I hope we have got the balance right. We have put as much as we can in the Bill—all the key elements of the scheme—and left the details to secondary legislation. I welcome what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said about the Bill and building trust and confidence.

The Bill builds on the radical changes made to the pension system over the past 10 years. We need to ensure that savers can be confident that their savings are being well managed. The measures in the Bill will help to protect them and to maintain their confidence. I thank all noble Lords for their contributions, and I invite the House to give the Bill a Second Reading.