My Lords, this has been a useful debate with lots of high-quality and thoughtful interventions. I will try to follow that standard by putting some remarks on the noble Lord’s amendments on the record, and also on my noble friend Lord Freud’s Amendment 70.
As your Lordships will be aware, we launched our recent consultation on charging in October 2013, following on from the Office of Fair Trading’s September 2013 market study into defined contribution workplace pensions. That study raised concerns, which the Government share, about the weakness in the buyer side of the market—a point made powerfully by the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, in recounting those examples—the complexity of the product and a lack of transparency, which hinders consumers’ abilities to compare schemes. My noble friend Lord Lawson, a distinguished economist, mentioned the principal agent
problem, which has at its heart, in an economic context, asymmetry of information. Transparency must therefore be part of the play which somehow levels the playing field between one side and the other.
Our consultation sought views on how the total cost of scheme membership, including transaction costs, might be captured, reported and managed. My noble friend Lord German rightly said that perhaps it was not an “either/or” solution, but more of an “and” solution. That was reflected in the consultation’s remit, which presented not just one idea but alternative measures to improve the transparency and disclosure charges, as referred to by my noble friend Lord Lawson with regard to his proposed new schedule: a cap on charges on default funds of defined contribution workplace pension schemes, a point made powerfully by the noble Lord, Lord Browne; a ban on active-member discounts and commission; and an extension of the ban on consultancy charges to all schemes used for automatic enrolment. Quite a wide-ranging consultation was launched.
By November last year we had 160 written responses from the evidence received. We will be publishing our response to this consultation shortly. In fact, Steve Webb, the Minister for Pensions, will be updating the other place on his response to the issue of a cap on charges on Thursday this week. I know how the machinery of government works; that does not quite deliver what we want before us in Grand Committee as we consider the amendment. But that information will be in the public domain, and I am sure will be a source of debate for others to draw upon on Report. I will offer some reassurances in the interim.