My Lords, these amendments relate to the crucial question of information. The Government have stressed at different stages of the Bill the move to reduce the complexity of the state pension to make sure that people understand their likely entitlement and are therefore incentivised to save enough to complement the support that they can expect from the state. This came up a lot when the Work and Pensions Select Committee looked into the matter. Citizens Advice, in its written evidence to the Select Committee, noted that a considerable complexity would remain in the system, mainly as a result of transitional provision. It accepted that as being unavoidable but said that:
“A commitment to a sustained communications programme could improve outcomes, manage expectations, minimise misinformation, promote action on NI contributions, and support personal saving for retirement”.
I think that was nicely put. The ABI said this to the Select Committee:
“Adequate communication of the change will be essential, or the clarity and simplicity of the new system could be undermined … No-one should feel unclear about the amount they will receive—and therefore need to save personally themselves”—
—a common view between the ABI and Citizens Advice.
The Select Committee noted that various witnesses focused on that issue. Sally West of Age UK said that,
“we are finding a lot of people are understandably confused”.
I think that that is an understatement. The Select Committee reported considerable confusion about the reforms. Many people wrongly believed that the introduction of the STP would mean that everyone would get £144 a week in state pension, because they did not understand the eligibility criteria. Others thought that there would be no means-testing at all; others thought that if they were due more under the current system, they would lose all that and get only what was due under the new system. The implications of having been contracted out or of not knowing whether you were contracted out or in was another area of confusion. It was noted that it was therefore important to,
“ensure that people have full information about their own future entitlement as well as a reasonable understanding of the reforms”.
5.15 pm
I searched on the internet for some of the headlines at the time and found some that illustrate the point. The Sun had a headline: “Stay-at-home mothers in £144 a week pension boost”. The Mail said: “Almost half a million women to lose hundreds of pounds every year in Government’s state pension revolution”.
It is possible for both those things to be true, depending on the people you talk about, but it illustrates that there is understandable confusion out there about what is going to happen as a result. As the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, pointed out, if noble Lords struggle to understand the detail, it is not unreasonable that people who have not had all the documentation with which the Box has so kindly provided us are not yet completely clear.
That puts big pressure on the Government to get their communication strategy right. My noble friend Lord McKenzie has given a characteristically careful and thorough exposition of the nature of the challenge, and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s answers to his questions. There are a couple of specific questions which I should be grateful if the Minister would answer. One is the obvious one, which is to be precise about at what point and in what form someone could expect to be contacted to have explained to them the nature of their entitlement. Do the Government propose to contact people who had previously requested a pension statement to tell them that it may no longer be accurate or that the basis on which it was calculated may no longer apply? At what point will the Government be able to give us more detail about the nature of the communications campaign?