Pensions Bill

I thank my noble friend Lady Hollis for not withdrawing the amendment before we had a chance to discuss it. Itis worth while continuing the debate on women’s pensions at almost every appropriate moment. My noble friend rightly highlighted two important issues—the need to conduct a gender impact assessment of the personal accounts proposals and the provision of information and advice appropriate for both women and men. When publishing our White Paper Personal Accounts: A New Way to Save, we recognised the importance of enabling both women and men to save for retirement. We also recognised that providing good-quality information would be critical to the success of personal accounts. The EOC has rightly acknowledged that personal accounts have the potential to help to deliver a decent income in retirement for millions of people by enabling more women to save, and at a lower cost. In the regulatory impact assessment that accompanied our White Paper, we set out what I stress was a preliminary gender assessment, which included our estimates for eligibility for automatic enrolment. As we have just heard, these indicated that an estimated 43 per cent of those eligible would be women, which equates to between 2.2 million and 3.4 million female employees. As my noble friend is well aware, our intention is to introduce a further Bill later this year, subject to the will of Parliament. I can reassure her that that Bill will be accompanied by a full gender impact assessment. This will include an assessment of the full proposals for personal accounts. In addition, legislation requires all public bodies to comply with a gender equality duty, and the authority will fall under that duty. Amendment No. 115 would require the delivery authority to produce a report on the information and advice needs of women and men within the first year of establishment, long before personal accounts are launched. We recognise that individuals will need information to enable them to make decisions about whether to participate in occupational pension saving if automatically enrolled, and on levels of contributions and fund choices. Advice on saving for retirement is specific to individuals and is regulated by the Financial Services Authority. The personal accounts scheme, like many others that operate automatic enrolment, is being designed so that regulated financial advice is not required, as we said when debating Amendment No. 120. But that does not mean that people will not have the right to information. We also recognise that different parties, which is what this discussion is about, will require different information and that information needs for women and men vary, depending on their circumstances. I think that the phrase is ““depending on their messy lives””, which has been coined during the passageof the Bill. Indeed, the DWP’s research paper The Gender Impact of Pension Reform indicated some evidence that women may lack confidence in their understanding and knowledge of pensions. This is a very important concern. It will be for the delivery authority to determine the information strategy for personal accounts. In providing this information, the delivery authoritywill need to take account of target groups and their circumstances. The authority will fall under the auspices of the gender equality duty, and a gender impact assessment will be carried out by the department. Noble Lords may be interested to know that that duty also requires the authority to produce the gender equality scheme, with the aim of that scheme being implemented in three years. Under the duty, there is a requirement for the authority to report annually on progress against that scheme, which I thought was an interesting point for this discussion. The noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, talked about working with stakeholders, particularly citizens advice bureaux. The DWP is committed to working closely with stakeholders, particularly stakeholders with such significant expertise. I hope with that my noble friend will consider withdrawing her amendment.