Finance Bill

I too wanted to ask the Minister this: what on earth is the rush about? One thing about annuitising and pension rules is that she has a little run-in time to consider—at some length—the implications of her proposals. I do not understand why there was such short notice and why the consultation is so rushed. I am forming an impression that the Government have already decided what they are going to do and that the consultation is a sham. If it is, they ought to have the decency to tell us what they have decided and not to consult at all. I would not have thought that the many experts who will be sunning themselves over the August holidays will thank the Government very much for giving them such a short time to respond. The foreword of the consultation document states:"““The Government wants to foster a new culture of saving in the UK.””" We would all agree with that, and that a rebalancing towards saving is necessary. Therefore, it is important to prioritise large numbers of people saving appropriately. I had a look to see what the Government have done so far to encourage saving, particularly in pensions, which is what annuities are all about. Will the Minister explain quite how reducing public and private pensions by changing their definitions from RPI to CPI helps to increase pension saving? Yesterday, the Daily Mail and various other experts said that that is a raid on people's pension expectations of more than £100 billion in the private sector, an amount that will accumulate year after year. Can the Minister explain how that encourages pension saving? Will she confirm that the impact assessment in this consultation lets the cat out of the bag when it comes to changing annuitisation rules? We have no particular problem, and certainly no philosophical problem with shifting the age of annuitisation from 75 to 77. Longevity has increased and the last rules—and the age of 75—were set in 1956. Indeed, annuitisation was first made compulsory in the Finance Bill of 1921, which was slightly before my time and I know that it was also before the Minister's time. I am reassured by what the Minister says about what might be called red lines in the Treasury's view of the consultation. The first is that annuities should continue in order to provide an income in retirement rather than as a tax-privileged method of saving large amounts of money that can then be taken as a lump sum over and above the 25% that can already be taken tax-free. Others are that there should be no Exchequer costs and no tax-avoidance activities. The latter might be difficult to sustain if the Minister intends to make changes that introduce a minimum income requirement. Interesting attempts have been made to define a minimum income requirement to allow someone to take complete usage—with appropriate tax paid, I hope—of the rest of the money in their pension pot. I know that the Government are consulting on that point, but it is not going to be an easy thing to decide. I notice also from the impact assessment that although the annuities market last year saw 445,000 people annuitise up to £11 billion of funds so that they could take an income until they required it no longer, the estimate of how many individuals will actually be affected by this change is a mere 8,000.