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7 Mar 2003 : Column 1094—continued
Mr. Bryant: My hon. Friend is making a very important point about people who may have funds in the region of £5,000, £7,000 or £10,000. Is he attracted to the idea of allowing them greater choice of serious ill-health commutation for instance, so that they could receive their amount as a lump sum, which is not of course allowed for in the Bill?
Mr. Dismore: My hon. Friend makes a very important and telling point. We could have proposed a series of flexibilities if the hon. and learned Gentleman had thought about the benefits to the whole population, as opposed to the relatively few millionaires whom the Bill is intended to help, and that point was echoed by my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley. This is not a Bill for everyone; it is for a relatively small number of people.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I have now formed the judgment that the hon. Gentleman is engaging in a great deal of repetition. I remind him of the powers of Chair under Standing Order No. 42, and I may have to exercise them unless he can demonstrate in his remaining remarks that he is dealing with fresh points.
Mr. Dismore: In that case, Mr. Deputy Speaker, perhaps I can move on to deal with income draw-down, and I can do so in a relatively short time. The Bill would remove the choice of income draw-down—a benefit currently available to rich people, not poor people. I shall not deal with the draw-down provisions at great length because of the very fact that they do not affect most people.
Under the draw-down provisions, a policyholder may take a tax-free lump sum from an accrued personal pension fund, draw income from that fund subject to specified limits and defer the annuity until the age of 75, but, in practice, relatively few people use income draw-down policy to defer annuity purchase—about 16,000 people in each of the past three years. According to the Inland Revenue, the average annuity is bought with a fund of £25,000, but funds used for draw-down average about £140,000. The Bill would remove that important choice, but that would affect only relatively rich people, so I do not intend to dwell on it.
I shall now move on to my next main, substantive point, which relates to a very important minority: the Plymouth Brethren. I understand that the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Mr. Flight) may also want to deal with this issue because he was very exercised about it previously. Last time round, we had a lengthy debate on Report on several different biblical references, and the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh) found the right one in the end.
The Plymouth Brethren are a group of about 14,000 people who are believers in the Lord Jesus Christ and seek to maintain faith and a good conscience, living by scriptural principles. The basis of their objection can be found in St. Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 6, verses 19 and 20:
- "What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and you are not your own?
For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's."
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. In fact, those alternatives would have achieved a much wider benefit for rather more people.
The Plymouth Brethren believe themselves to be under an obligation to provide for their future through St. Paul's first letter to Timothy, chapter 5, verse 8:
- "But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel."
Of course there are no votes in this—the Plymouth Brethren do not vote—but we must protect minorities, and the problem goes back to 1828. We ought to pursue a dialogue with them to try to find a way to meet the requirements and tenets of their faith, while satisfying the requirements of the Inland Revenue, which has its own tenets and, I am afraid to say, they are sometimes even more obscure than those of the Plymouth Brethren. In the end, however, we must try to satisfy their requirements. In their submission to the Select Committee on Work and Pensions, as part of our present inquiry, they set out in some detail—which I will not go through—alternative proposals for a locked-in individual savings account. The ISA proposals that they have put forward are something that the Treasury ought to consider as of more general benefit that just for the Plymouth Brethren. The Bill—I am afraid that the hon. and learned Gentleman in charge of it has now left the Chamber—proposes what is called a retirement failsafe fund, which is exactly the same as was proposed last time. As with the last time, however, the retirement failsafe fund is not defined within the Bill. I would have thought that hon. and learned Gentleman would have his tackle in order by now, but the Bill is silent on that point. It simply provides a Henry VIII clause to allow the retirement failsafe fund to be defined by, I presume, the Financial Secretary, through regulation. It is simply not worked out.
The proposed features of the failsafe fund, as I understand it, although they were not included in the Bill, were as follows: 150 per cent. of the fund would be required to purchase the mini annuity or the whole of pension savings would be sufficient; there would be an annual requirement to withdraw the minimum retirement income from the failsafe fund, the remaining fund would be kept separate but could be withdrawn at any time, and once an individual reaches 80 the two funds would be combined; the annual income would be the remaining fund divided by the number of years, until the individual reached 100—
Mr. Bryant: What I am confused about in relation to the position of the Christian Brethren is that the first letter of St. Paul to Timothy, which they cite as the basis for their concern on the issue, is about Church discipline and the treatment of widows. As my hon. Friend has said, they cite verse 8:
- "And if anyone does not make provision for his relations, and especially for members of his own household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever."
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. There is a convention whereby matters raised on Second Reading are of a more general nature. "Erskine May" advises that too much detail should not be attempted, as that is for a later stage of the Bill, if reached. I rule the hon. Gentleman out of order, as he is going into too much detail on a particular point in an intervention at this stage of the proceedings.
Mr. Dismore: I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for rescuing me, as I would hesitate to engage in a theological debate with my theological hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda. He was also quoting from a different version of the Bible, which made it even more difficult. I was working from the King James version; I am not quite sure what he was working from but no doubt we can talk about that afterwards.
The problem with the retirement failsafe fund is that one can call it a proselytising or evangelical fund. There are only 12,000 Plymouth Brethren in the entire United Kingdom at the moment, but if this proposal were to go forward, that number could increase dramatically. The people who are trying to back it up might find that there was a certain loophole, which clearly could not be confined to the Plymouth Brethren but would have to be more broadly and generally available. A large number of millionaires might suddenly sign up, and the net result might have damaging consequences to the Treasury.
My main concern about the proposal is therefore that, although, on the face of it, it is a vehicle to achieve a particular purpose, it does not specify in any way how that purpose should be effected. It says to my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary, "We want you to do something to achieve broadly this effect, but we are not going to tell you how to do it." That is perhaps one of the benefits of being in opposition: one can simply say that it is for the Minister to work out the nuts and bolts. It is very irresponsible of the hon. and learned Member for Harborough to put the proposal forward without
making any effort to define what it is, how it might operate, or, having consulted the Christian Brethren, whether it is what they would like. In fact, they have made clear that they do not want it after all.
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