The introduction of auto-enrolment makes rigorous pension scheme governance essential. This Report calls on the Government to reassess the case for establishing one body with sole responsibility for regulating workplace pensions. There are concerns over current gaps in regulation and the potential for further gaps to arise as a result of now having three regulators, the Pensions Regulator; and the new Financial Conduct Authority and Prudential Regulation Authority, set up to replace the FSA. The Report argues that a single regulator is necessary to ensure that all members of workplace pension schemes are adequately and consistently protected. It also highlights that deferred-member charges and member-borne consultancy charges have the potential to cause serious consumer detriment. It recommends that both are banned by the Government, if significant progress is not made in the very near future by the industry towards ending them. There is particular concern about member-borne consultancy charges and those charges applied to deferred members - people who stop contributing to their pension scheme. The trend towards lower pension scheme charges is welcome. However, a good average is not sufficient and there is potential for consumer detriment in schemes that persist in retaining high charges. The Government should also regularly review its policy on capping charges for auto-enrolment schemes. Consumers are also continuing to lose out when they buy annuities because pension providers are not doing enough to ensure people are aware that they can shop around for the best annuity rate rather than being obliged to buy an annuity from their pension provider.
Reforms to the support provided for housing costs - including the Social Sector Size Criteria (SSSC) (also known as the "Bedroom Tax" and the "Spare Room Subsidy") and the household Benefit Cap are causing financial hardship to vulnerable people who were not the intended targets of the reforms and are unlikely to be able to change their circumstances in response. The SSSC is having a particular impact on people with disabilities who have adapted homes or need a room to hold medical equipment or to accommodate a carer. Anybody living in a home that has been significantly adapted for them should be exempt from the SSSC and all recipients of Carers Allowance where the carer lives with the disabled person should be exempt from the Benefit Cap. The Report further urges the Government to exempt all households that contain a person in receipt of higher level disability benefits (DLA or PIP) from the SSSC. Discretionary Housing Payments (DHPs) are only temporary, and whether or not a claimant is awarded DHP is heavily dependent on where they live because different local authorities apply different eligibility rules. Local authorities often have no option other than to place homeless households in expensive temporary accommodation and claimants can then fall within the scope of the Benefit Cap. Local authorities then often have to pay the shortfall for those affected by the Cap so there is no overall saving to public funds. All households in temporary accommodation should therefore also be exempt from the Benefit Cap.
There remains worrying uncertainty about the new Universal Credit (UC) IT system. This includes how it will work, how much it will cost, and who will develop it. National roll-out of UC was due to begin in October 2013. But problems with IT systems meant that major changes to the implementation timetable were made in July and then again in December 2013. Currently, UC claims are still limited to 10 Pathfinder Jobcentres. New claims are not expected to be extended to the whole of Great Britain until 2016; and the bulk of existing claimants will not move over to UC until 2016-17. Only 4,280 people were claiming Universal Credit by December 2013 and the majority of these claims were of the simplest nature. By comparison, in the same month, 1.22 million people were claiming Jobseekers Allowance. The DWP is developing a new 'end-state solution' for UC IT which will eventually replace the IT system currently in use in the UC Pathfinders. This is costing £25-32 million to develop up to November 2014, with no indication of how much more it will cost in the long-term. The Government has hampered the Committee's scrutiny of UC implementation by not providing accurate, timely and detailed information. And there is a lack of detail on how support for vulnerable people being provided in partnership with local authorities, housing providers and the voluntary sector will operate. Delays to UC implementation mean that local authorities will now administer housing benefit for much longer than anticipated.
A comprehensive, scholarly accessible study, in which the authors draw upon poetry and mythology, art and literature, archaeology and psychology to show how the myth of the goddess has been lost from our formal Judeo-Christian images of the divine. They explain what happened to the goddess, when, and how she was excluded from western culture, and the implications of this loss.
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