Written Evidence to be reported to the House.
Pensions Bill
1:30 pm
John Cridland: I think that generic advice can be very powerful in this area, notwithstanding the difficulties that we have already touched on.
I am involved as an employer member of the steering group for the Government’s financial capability initiative, which is looking at generic pensions advice alongside other forms of generic financial advice to students, families having children and a whole range of groups that often get themselves into deep difficulty. We have found in the financial capability exercise that it is possible to cast quite generic, quite short and pithy advice that is nonetheless quite meaningful to the constituency, and to use a series of intermediaries to reach groups in a way that we had previously not managed to do. I do not understate the difficulties but I am quite optimistic that that will be possible.
In relation to your direct question on the role of the employer, I think that when employers make such a strong stance that it is not their job they are largely saying “We are not competent to do it”. Without repeating the points made, we are not talking about sophisticated companies with their own HR resource. Therefore, in direct answer to your question, I think that they are willing to be a conduit for advice prepared by others but not to provide even outline information that they have generated themselves. I think that they are simply not competent to do so.