Pensions Bill

I thank noble Lords who have contributed to this debate, but I urge the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, not to keep going on about changes of Ministers at this juncture—it does not help one to concentrate. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, for moving the amendment, which raises the important issue of future pension credit take-up. Much has already been said about this subject both here and in another place; however, I think we can all agree that it would not have been appropriate to allow means-testing to spread as it would have done had we not acted. Our package of reforms will result in a reduction of the proportion of pensioners eligible for pension credit. This amendment seeks to require the Government to produce five-yearly reports on pension credit which will be considered by both Houses. We have already set out our longer-term projections for pension credit entitlement under our reform proposals in the regulatory impact assessment which accompanies the Bill. There is a lot of information about how the projections have been derived. It is important that we monitor the extent of means-testing and the take-up and expenditure of pension credit, and such evaluation will be critical in ensuring that our reform project is on track. In that respect I can see the intentions behind this amendment. However, the amendment asks for a five-yearly report on information which is largely already produced regularly, usually annually. The DWP already publishes annual long-term estimates of benefit expenditure which includes pension credit. These estimates also feed into the Treasury report on long-term fiscal sustainability. Estimates of current and projected case loads are used to calculate these expenditure projections. We recently published these case-load projections and will continue to do so annually. Estimates of current pension take-up rates are included in the annual take-up of income-related benefits report published under the independent national statistics guidelines. The number of pension credit recipients is published quarterly on the DWP website. So we already regularly produce a comprehensive set of pension credit data, and it is important that we continue to do so for planning and operational purposes. I can therefore see no reason for legislation to require information that is already in the public domain to be reproduced in a single report and published only every five years. That would be a backwards step from what we have now. For those reasons, I urge the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment. I know that we are going to have a debate, as part of our consideration of the Bill, about the extent of means-testing and how that impacts on people’s propensity to save, and I look forward to that. Simply because people are on pension credit does not mean that they cannot get good returns from savings. That would not apply to absolutely everyone in that situation. The long-term projection shows that something like 6 per cent of people on pension credit would be on the guaranteed minimum amount, which is the 100 per cent withdrawal category. A lot of information is already in the public domain and is published and produced regularly, and I am happy to commit the Government to producing regular updates of our longer-term projections of pension credit entitlement under reform, which fed into the RIA.