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Pensions Bill

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for the amendment and for the opportunity to make our position absolutely clear on what is a very important issue. As I said in Committee, it has never been our policy contention that employers would be required to give advice to workers. The purpose of Clause 10 is to provide for regulations which will clearly set out the key pieces of factual information that must be provided to a worker as part of the wider automatic-enrolment joining process. Evidence suggests that the best means of getting some of that factual information to workers will be through the employer, as much of that information will be known only by the employer at the relevant time. By factual information, we mean, for example, the date of enrolment, details of the scheme and the amount of contributions being deducted from wages and paid over to the scheme. I believe that our aims in this regard are entirely consistent with the first part of the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes. The Government’s position on employers and advice is absolutely clear and, therefore, we do not consider it necessary to put that in the Bill. That has been explained and, in Committee, where we differed was on whether it is necessary to provide employers with protection from any liability as a result of giving information to a jobholder or worker. We considered the issue and decided that there is minimal risk to the employer who complies with what is prescribed in regulations. The regulations will clearly set out what information must be given by the employer. As the employer will be required to provide simple and straightforward information and will not be expected to play any part in the decision-making process, we do not believe that an employer will be held responsible for an individual’s decision to save for retirement. I appreciate that employers would welcome the reassurance that a safe-harbour provision would offer. However, I am mindful of the potential risks of such an approach in the wider employment-law context and wish to consider that further. I would not want to commit to bringing forward a safe-harbour amendment without full consideration of all the issues. We need to consider carefully how offering employers a safe harbour will impact and interact with other provisions in the Bill. For example, we would not want to introduce accidentally an exemption to the Chapter 3 inducement provisions, nor would we want to provide protection to those employers who influence a jobholder’s decision to participate in pension saving by, say, over-inflating the amount of contribution to be deducted from wages, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, said. Advice needs to be given properly, in a considered and accurate way. If the noble Baroness does not press her amendment, I promise to return to this matter at Third Reading. I am conscious that we are stacking up a few issues for Third Reading, but I would like to give further thought to whether we can have a safe-harbour provision. I do not commit to being able to do that, but perhaps that might give the reassurance that employers want without giving carte blanche to those who would deliberately not wish to comply with proper information requirements.