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Pensions Bill

It is a great pleasure to commend to the House new clause 1 and the associated new clauses and amendments in this group. This group falls neatly into two distinct categories, and it is important for hon. Members to understand that there are two major issues involved. One is the commencement of the personal accounts system. The second is what was referred to in Committee as the level playing field issue, namely the extent to which personal accounts will or will not compete on equal terms with existing alternative pension provisions. For once, I can say with hand on heart that there is no shadow of a doubt about the Government's policy. It is that the new system should commence in 2012. Of course, even that is a couple of years late, because the Turner commission originally foreshadowed personal accounts as a new system to be set up in 2010. None the less, the Government have made it abundantly clear—as did the Minister in Committee—that 2012 was to be the start date, and that continues to be the Government's firm intention. We might therefore wonder why a similarly worded amendment in Committee did not find favour with Ministers. New clause 1 is pretty simple in its drafting, and all that it seeks to do is to ensure that personal accounts established"““under section 58 of this Act shall commence operation with effect from 1st April 2012.””" If it is to be that year, that seems to be the logical date to start. If we investigate a little more closely, however, we find that there is some doubt as to whether that date will be the due date. We had a lengthy debate in Committee, following the interview given by the chief executive of the Personal Accounts Delivery Authority, Mr. Tim Jones, with Mr. Paul Lewis of ““Money Box”” in December. In that interview, Mr. Jones hinted for the first time at the possibility that personal accounts would not be ready in time. Paul Lewis asked him the rather direct question:"““This scheme is scheduled to start in April 2012, just over four years away. Is that a realistic target?””" Mr. Jones said:"““The honest answer is I do not know yet.””" When put to him later that it might be another date in the future, he said:"““There is that possibility, yeah, and that's the purpose of bringing somebody like me from the private sector in to look at what is a realistic balance of the desire to get started as quickly as reasonably possible with the need to manage risks to make sure this starts with quality when it starts.””" On the Opposition side of the House, not least because Conservative Members have some slight ambitions that we might be in the driving seat in 2012, we accept, of course, that a bungled launch of personal accounts would not be ideal, but the prospect of the start date being postponed is almost as difficult to contemplate. The Secretary of State, who is sadly no longer in his place, made a rather good speech a while ago about the sort of planning blight that affects people's saving for their retirement; they may have read that something is going to happen in 2012, which might be taken as a reason for not doing something now. On any view, a gap of several years, which can never be redeemed, for some people who could and should be saving for their retirement, is unfortunate. One particularly interesting thing that emerged from Committee debates was that a review was going on, as Mr. Jones accepted in the Radio 4 interview. Having been brought into the new job, he was carrying out a review, as we would expect, of how practical all this would be. There was some to-ing and fro-ing between the Minister and myself about whether Mr. Jones would produce a report at the end of the process. We know that PADA currently employs some 100 different consultants, presumably trying to get the right answers to these questions, but there seemed to be some doubt—at least in the Minister's mind—as to whether, by the end of these deliberations, Mr. Jones would actually produce a report on how likely it was that personal accounts would be up and running in 2012. I say in passing that it was my first experience of a Public Bill Committee taking oral evidence, and I thought that it was an extremely helpful procedure—certainly in respect of this Bill. That view was held generally by members of the Committee of all political parties. When I asked Mr. Jones in the Public Bill Committee"““Will this new scheme be up and running in 2012, or is there a plan B?””" he replied:"““The policy intention””—" which I assume is a polite way of expressing a distance between himself and Ministers,"““is that the personal accounts scheme will launch in 2012, and it is my job, and the delivery authority's job, to meet that intention. We have no evidence at this stage that that is unachievable.””––[Official Report, Pensions Public Bill Committee, 15 January 2008; c. 7, Q11.]" That is hardly the most ringing endorsement of how likely it is to be ready. We ended up having a Division in Committee simply because the Minister was unwilling to bring himself to agree to let us have a copy of any report that he received from Mr. Jones on the matter. Having reflected on the issue since, I still take the view that it is inconceivable that Mr. Jones, in view of his meticulous nature and experience in these matters, will not produce a pretty hefty report for somebody—presumably his chairman and/or Ministers—at the end of the review process. We are simply saying, as part of the general air of amity and consensus that has been evident throughout most of the Bill's passage so far, that we should be privy to those conclusions. We all have a problem if there are real, practical difficulties—with IT or other systems or for any other reason—in delivering the project on time. None of us should underestimate the significance or the size of the challenge facing Mr. Jones and his team. I am quite sure that, because of his past experience, he is up to the job, but that is really why we wanted the matter out in the open on Report.