Retirement Income Reform Bill

Mr. Lawrie Quinn (Scarborough and Whitby): I congratulate the hon. and learned Gentleman on his success in the private Member's Bill ballot. Earlier, on a point of order, I sought to find out about the Bill's explanatory notes, and one of the reasons that I wanted to explore that was the status of recent correspondence that I and perhaps the hon. and learned Gentleman have received from the Association of British Insurers with regard to the consumer survey that it has undertaken on such issues. The hon. and learned Gentleman would help me to understand better the purpose of the Bill if he could tell me whether he has received that correspondence and what his reaction to it is in relation to the Bill?

Mr. Garnier: I am always delighted when people take an interest in any legislation. I suspect that if the hon. Gentleman has done his homework, which I am sure he does, and read the Bill and related it to the Income and Corporation Taxes Act 1988, he will not be in any doubt about the Bill.

Lawrie Quinn rose -

Mr. Garnier: I wish to make some progress; I have been speaking for about two minutes only. I know that the hon. Gentleman is keen to get back to Scarborough and I do not want to delay him for any longer than is necessary, so if he will contain himself for a moment -

Lawrie Quinn: Will the hon. and learned Gentleman give way?

Mr. Garnier: I shall give way in a moment, perhaps, but I want to make some progress, so that other hon. Members, such as the hon. Gentleman, who have a lot to say will feel that enough time has been permitted for them to speak.

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Lawrie Quinn: Will the hon. and learned Gentleman give way?

Mr. Garnier: No, I will let the hon. Gentleman make his own speech, as I am very worried about his train to Scarborough.

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Lawrie Quinn: May I offer my congratulations to my hon. Friend on the sterling job that he does every Friday? We have just had clear evidence of the effect that he has. Does he agree that when moving the Bill's Second Reading the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) failed to get to its core? The absence of explanatory notes for such an important and technical measure does not do him or the debate any credit.

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Lawrie Quinn: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for not only declaring an interest, but for reminding the House of his expert work on the Select Committee. Has the ABI been along to the Committee and made representations on the issue? Has he had an opportunity to consider the important research that it has conducted on consumer attitudes to the provisions before the House?

Mr. Dismore: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that. He has the briefing document with him and will be able to comment on it at length if he is called to speak, although I will touch on that subject tangentially. The ABI did give evidence to the inquiry, but I do not recall it spending much time on annuities. That may reflect how seriously it takes the problem.

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Lawrie Quinn: I served on the Committee that considered the Bill promoted by the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry) and must disagree with my hon. Friend. I do not think that the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) has copied the earlier Bill because he would have certainly done something about updating and producing the explanatory notes. He accused me of not doing my homework, but I wonder whether he did his homework or even talked to the industry.

Mr. Dismore: My hon. Friend is right. The absence of explanatory notes is serious. Not only did the hon. and learned Gentleman not deal with the issue of updating the explanatory notes, but it has been almost a year since the previous Bill ran out of time and he has taken no steps to address our criticisms or the lacunae in the provisions. I would take him more seriously if he had considered some of the criticisms that we expressed last year and taken steps to deal with them, but all those criticisms still apply. Since then, I have studied the issues in more detail and now have new criticisms to put to him.

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Lawrie Quinn: I served on the Committee considering the Bill introduced by the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry), when our hon. Friend the Financial Secretary tabled a relevant amendment? Has my hon. Friend had an opportunity to study the arguments deployed on that occasion? Is it not lamentable that the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) has failed to deal with the key arguments that the Government made then, and should he not have altered the Bill instead of producing a copycat measure?

Mr. Dismore: My hon. Friend is right, and I have with me copies of Hansard recording the Committee stages of the Bill introduced by the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon. The hon. and learned Member for Harborough may care to borrow them. He has obviously not read them, otherwise, as my hon. Friend said, he would have altered his Bill. He simply copied his right hon. Friend's Bill without any consideration of the cogent arguments made by my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary who, I am sure, will speak about them later.

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Lawrie Quinn: I apologise for disturbing the flow of my hon. Friend's speech. However, he knows that I am but a simple engineer. From my professional perspective, to ignore central core tenets of a profession by disregarding major legislation and major statutes would have the most serious consequences. If I ignored principles while designing the foundations of a bridge, it would be construed that I was being negligent within my profession. My hon. Friend is from the legal profession. Would he go so far as to accuse the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) of being negligent in ignoring the key, central tenets of his own profession by ignoring such an important part of statute law and of the British legal system that involves human rights?

Mr. Dismore: My hon. Friend makes a telling point. I would not accuse the hon. and learned Gentleman of professional negligence in the Chamber. He sits in the Chamber in connection not with his part-time job as a QC in the law courts, but with his other part-time job as a Member of Parliament. However, I would say to the hon. and learned Gentleman that had he advanced his argument before a judge without dealing with all the relevant points under the Human Rights Act and the case to which I shall shortly refer, his clients would have had something to say about that, at the very least.

Lawrie Quinn: I shall use again the analogy of designing a structure. Is my hon. Friend saying that the very foundations of the Bill are flawed and that the case is undermined? Is it not deeply regrettable that the hon. and learned Gentleman did not provide explanatory notes, did not do his homework -

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I have dealt with the question of explanatory notes. The hon. Gentleman has repeated the point more than once, which is unnecessary. We would do better dealing with the substance of the Bill.

Mr. Dismore: In response to my hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby - not on the question of explanatory notes, but on his engineering analogy - I would simply say that the hon. and learned Gentleman's structure is built on foundations of sand.

Lawrie Quinn: Technically, that is not a problem.

Mr. Dismore: That shows that my hon. Friend is an engineer and I am a lawyer.

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Lawrie Quinn: Has my hon. Friend had an opportunity to study some of the mortality figures from the recent census? I was horrified to see that mortality rates among women who live in coalfield communities are significantly higher than the national average. Does he agree that the workplace eventually shortens the lives not only of the men, but of the women? They often had to clean the men's backs, and they also inhaled coal dust and had the same industrial disease visited upon them, which means that they have lost out in life expectancy. Is that not a national scandal?

Mr. Dismore: My hon. Friend makes his point eloquently and I do not think that there is anything that I can add. As I mentioned, when an insurance company sets an annuity, it takes into account variations in respect of where people live. He refers to precisely the sort of factors that are relevant. It is not a question only of whether people live somewhere nice beside the sea now, but of where they lived all their working-age lives and the stresses and strains relating to that area, their diet and so on.

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Lawrie Quinn: Is my hon. Friend aware of the detail of the letter that every hon. Member has received from the Association of British Insurers? It states that the minimum retirement income would have to be set at a level in excess of £200 a week if individuals were not to find it necessary to claim a means-tested benefit during their retirement. Should not the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) have done his homework and been conscious of this, and should he not have factored it in to the significant repair work to the original Bill proposed by the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry) some time ago? These were the key points that we made on many occasions in Committee at that time.

Mr. Dismore: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. This is one of the major criticisms of the hon. and learned Gentleman's Bill: he has entirely failed to say what he thinks the figure should be. He has passed the buck to the Chancellor, while giving the Chancellor conflicting provisions that say neither one thing nor the other and do not interact. He has given no explanation whatever for that. If he is seriously asking the House to approve his Bill, I hope that, when he responds to the debate - which may not happen for some time - he will at least have thought up a figure which he thinks is the minimum that someone should be expected to live on.

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Lawrie Quinn: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way to me, I think for about the eighth time. May I remind him that he has been on his feet for almost 90 minutes? Does he not agree that the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Mr. Flight) has scored a classic own goal, just as the Conservatives did during their 18 years of government in terms of the terrible way in which they treated pensioners?

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Lawrie Quinn: My hon. Friend brings to mind the debate in Committee on the previous incarnation of this legislation. Indeed, we had a considered and full debate. The Christian Brethren have proposed certain solutions to the theological problems that they have. Is it not surprising that the hon. and learned Gentleman was not prepared to take interventions or scrutiny on that point, which is important to a key minority group?

Mr. Dismore: My hon. Friend is right. The problem is that the Bill purports to suggest a proposal that would deal with the position of the Plymouth Brethren, but it would create a series of other problems. We have to understand where the Plymouth Brethren are coming from, so we can understand that the hon. and learned Gentleman's proposals do not deal with their problems and how alternatives, if he had had the courtesy to engage with them and consult them, might have achieved that objective if incorporated in the Bill.

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Lawrie Quinn: I am listening closely to this point. Is not the key question whether there is fiscal neutrality linked to the important issues of consumer behaviour that were clearly identified in the letter that I mentioned? The hon. and learned Gentleman appears to fail to recognise that point in the context of this debate.

Mr. Dismore: My hon. Friend is right. The hon. and learned Gentleman has not thought through the real-life consequences. Although one can create a great superstructure in theory, how people react to it might be very different.

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Lawrie Quinn: My hon. Friend seems to be recommending preparation that the hon. and learned Member for Harborough may want to make before the Bill goes into Committee. Will my hon. Friend join me in commending to the hon. and learned Gentleman the important document, "Annuities - The Consumer Experience", produced by the Association of British Insurers? For me, that underpins the debate on the future of annuities, but obviously the Member promoting the Bill has failed to recognise that.

Mr. Dismore: I am sure that my hon. Friend makes his point exceedingly well, and if he catches your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, he will be able to develop those thoughts at length. It would be regrettable if the Bill were to reach Committee stage because it requires so much heavy engineering that it would make the railways pale into insignificance. [Interruption.] I thought that that would wake up the hon. and learned Member for Harborough. The Bill is so flawed that if it reaches Committee, it will never come out again.

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Lawrie Quinn: I am listening carefully to my hon. Friend, and regret that he is coming to the end of his speech. Obviously, longevity is an important part of our debate. Does he agree that that press release could be characterised only as, to use the language of my own industry, a shoddy piece of cowboy workmanship?

Mr. Dismore: I would not go down my hon. Friend's line, except to say that perhaps it is negligent with a small "n", or misleading with a small "m", or perhaps with a capital "M", to suggest that the Bill is simple to understand and free of unnecessary technicalities. The hon. and learned Gentleman has skated over all the technicalities and details that inevitably have to be addressed. I hoped that when he introduced the Bill he would fill in some of the gaps, but he failed lamentably to do so.

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Lawrie Quinn: The hon. Gentleman has shown that he has done considerable preparation for his contribution. Did he study the important ABI document entitled "Annuities - The Consumer Experience", which suggests that only one in 20 pensioners will benefit from the measure? What is his party's position on that?

Dr. Cable: The hon. Gentleman is right that as of now only a small minority of pensioners would benefit. However, more and more pensioners are being thrown into money purchase schemes. For that reason, in five or 10 years' time, the number of people affected will have grown. The hon. Gentleman is also right that I spent some time preparing for the debate. I know that I am stretching your patience, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and I would like to bring my remarks to an end.