Clause 19
Pensions Bill
10:30 am
Nigel Waterson (Shadow Minister, Work & Pensions; Eastbourne, Conservative)
He obviously works night and day. Images of Richard Nixon with a 5 o’clock shadowdid for him. The unfortunate headline reads: “Would you buy a pension from this man?” I think it was Marilyn Monroe who said that any publicity wasgood publicity, but there is a limit even to that nostrum.
In this group of amendments, we come on to much wider issues about the way in which personal accounts function. The detailed stuff, as the Minister will no doubt tell us at length, will be included in the next Bill. However, by that time, the delivery authority will have spent a chunk of its £21 million and will havenailed down some of the parameters of personal accounts. It is important to draw the Ministerand the Government out on the key issues in the development of personal accounts. I make no apology for doing so, but I shall try to be succinct. I shall look in detail at the amendments before making some general points.
To put everything in context, it is important to consider the views of the ABI, which expressed concern about two fundamental issues that we have raised time and time again. My hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond) and I raised them on Second Reading, and I make no apology for doing so in Committee. First, the ABI said that
“the Delivery Authority should be required to take account of the potential impact on the existing pensions market...in the detailed design of Personal Accounts.”
The Government have not only failed to do so, but have taken a quantum leap and increased the contribution cap. A few days ago, they announced something of which we take an even more serious view.
The second concern of the ABI is that
“the authority should have a duty to ensure that Personal Accounts are designed to focus on the target market (of low and middle earners), with an overall aim of increasing both the number of savers and the total amount saved.”
That is not some semantic distinction. It is important, especially at this stage, to set out what constitutes the success or failure of personal accounts. That must be clearly understood before we embark on this great adventure.
I shall now turn to the amendments. Some of them are fairly minor; others are more important. I shall begin with amendment No. 83. One might think that it was only a slight change of words. The clause says:
“The Authority may do anything it thinks appropriate for preparing for the implementation of, or for advising on the modification of, any relevant proposals about personal accounts.”
It is difficult to think of a more sweeping set of powers for the authority, which is newly emboldened, with£21 million burning a hole in its corporate pocket. We want to turn down the volume a bit and replace “appropriate” with “strictly necessary”. The point of that is to ensure that those who run the authority have a clear idea of what constitutes their duties.
Amendment No. 84 is a probing amendment.Clause 19(2) says that
“‘relevant proposals about personal accounts’ means proposals by the Secretary of State (whether or not Parliament has given any approval on which their implementation depends)”.
We are not entirely happy about that. Parliament should have a role in the proposals at the relevant time, although there may be some good, practical reasons why the Minister wants to pursue a different course.
I believe that amendment No. 20 is from the Liberal Democrats.