UK Parliament / Open data

Pensions Bill

Proceeding contribution from Lord Browne of Ladyton (Labour) in the House of Lords on Wednesday, 8 January 2014. It occurred during Debate on bills and Committee proceeding on Pensions Bill.

My Lords, I am pleased and not surprised that a cup of tea with the Minister can last one a very long time. May I tempt him to look at the challenge that he has been posed from a slightly different perspective? It strikes me that a number of things may be possible. First, I tempt him to express a view on whether he thinks that it would be a good thing to encourage people in their retirement to have some capital, rather than encouraging individual people to defer a pension or whatever. As a point of principle, would it not be better for us if our retired population had access to some capital that would cover these rainy-day situations?

Secondly, is it possible to take advantage of the Bill, in the way in which the Minister has suggested pensioners can do, by deferring taking pensions for a year and then taking that as a lump sum or by some other simple method to create an opportunity for people to take a deferred pension lump sum to provide that capital? I am struck that it should not necessarily be the case that the only way of doing this is to import a very complicated existing procedure as a method of taking a lump sum, and then finding that that confounded the argument for simplicity. Is it not worth spending some time to see whether there is a simpler method of doing this, such as perhaps an extension of what the Minister has tempted us with today as a possibility?

About this proceeding contribution

Reference

750 cc397-8GC 

Session

2013-14

Chamber / Committee

House of Lords Grand Committee

Legislation

Pensions Bill 2013-14
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