Lords debate Pensions Bill for four hours as future for dashboard and criminal sanctions questioned

Peers debated the government’s flagship 2020 Pension Schemes Bill for more than four hours last night.

The bill attempts to tackle a wide range of issues, from criminal sanctions on executives that recklessly underfund pension schemes, to allowing for collective defined contribution schemes and formalising a pensions dashboard.

A number of House of Lords members raised questions over the scope of the sanctions for pension scheme underfunding. Baroness Drake noted the rules had been drawn up “incredibly widely”.

Meanwhile, the House of Lords continued to debate whether a single, publicly run pension dashboard would be preferable to multiple dashboards, or whether to alloq collective defined contribution schemes to be set up industry-wide, or just on a single employer basis as in the recent case of Royal Mail.

The bill does not legislate for lowering the automatic enrolment starting age from 22 to 18 – a proposal made by the Department for Work and Pensions – or pave the way for defined  benefit pension consolidators through law.

Former pensions minister Steve Webb warns that the powers to fine so-called ‘bad bosses’ would be a “serious backward step” if they discouraged lay people from wanting to act as trustees.

“The general thrust of this bill is widely welcomed but there are still serious concerns about both what is in the bill and what is left out,” he says. “Whilst the DWP can ultimately use its majority in the House of Commons to ram through pretty much any legislation, the pension system would be better if it listened carefully to the concerns raised by peers and amended its own bill”.