I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle (Mary Robinson) for bringing the Bill before the House. As with other Bills that we have considered today, it is astonishing that its requirements even need to be made—pension trustees or managers using scheme assets to reimburse themselves and repay civil penalties is, in any situation, an extraordinary concept. The Bill will be righting a potential wrong, which is extremely important.
Before I came to this place, my background was in the financial services industry. When I was a county councillor in Powys, I was a member of the pensions and investment committee. I have also had considerable experience of acting as a trustee to various charities, overseeing their financial affairs. So, from my point of view, this is a subject of particular interest.
My hon. Friend made the vital point about how pension dashboards, as an electronic communication service, will allow individuals to see their pensions information—including their state pension—in one place online. I am pleased to hear that we are not far off pension schemes being connected to the technology—that is from 1 April—and that they will have until October 2025 to be, I presume, fully up and running. Anything that can be introduced that demystifies the pension world and makes information more accessible to people is vital.
My hon. Friend made two other points about the dashboards, one of which was about uniting people with lost pensions. That might sound peculiar to some, but those who have been in different employments will have been members of different pension schemes and companies—parents may have set up a pension for them—and so on. That is therefore a much more important point than it might appear at first sight.
My hon. Friend’s second point was about better help in retirement in general. At a time when inflation and interest rates are high, and the cost of living is difficult for people, the pensions issue could not be more important. With prices going up sharply, anything that we can do to help people in retirement on a static income, or an income that is not growing much, is vital.
I am delighted that the pensions Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Laura Trott), is present; she is a true champion of the pensions industry and an expert on the subject. I have heard her speak on the subject on several occasions. The point of my hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle about automatic enrolment is extremely pertinent, because the whole pensions industry has been transformed in recent years, particularly under the Conservative Government, so more people are involved in it. The ability to have pensions dashboards as an electronic communication is therefore vital.
To go back to my original point, it is extraordinary that there is nothing in legislation, backed by a criminal sanction, to prohibit the trustees or managers from drawing on and reimbursing themselves from the pension schemes. As somebody who was involved in that industry, one way or another, for a long time, I could not imagine
being on a board of trustees where anybody would ever consider doing that, but clearly it does happen. My hon. Friend’s point is that those are, potentially, substantial amounts of money. The financial penalty under the current non-compliance requirements in part 4 of the Pensions Dashboards Regulations 2022 is up to a maximum of £5,000 in the case of an individual or £50,000 in other cases, such as corporate trustees. So if those were to be reimbursed from the schemes, they would be substantial subtractions.