Minister for Disabled People

Debate between Baroness Sherlock and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Tuesday 19th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

Mims Davies is the Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work, but I do not think we should spend all our time focusing on titles. I do not want to tread on my noble friend Lord Younger’s toes but, having studied this subject in preparation, I was trying to talk a little about what we will actually do for the disabled. Of course we need to respect them and talk about them in an appropriate way but, as noble Lords will know, it is important to have action and get things done.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, words matter, but action matters even more. Are my back-of-an-envelope sums right—is Mims Davies now the 13th Minister for Disabled People since the Government came to power in 2010? If so, does the Minister think that all this moving around is damaging things? For example, it is introducing massive delays to the Access to Work scheme, which left one autistic woman waiting 13 months to get a job. We need some action now, do we not?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

The noble Baroness may be right: perhaps Ministers do move around more than is ideal on occasions. I was delighted to discover that I was not moving in the last reshuffle and can continue. The key thing is to focus on the work in hand, and I believe Mims Davies will do that, with support from across the Cabinet.

Pension Schemes Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Sherlock and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting & Committee: 1st sitting : House of Lords
Monday 24th February 2020 Grand Committee

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I think this shows that it is important that we understand what the statutory instruments in this area are going to look like. It will obviously lead to a clearer conversation if the Government are able to move on that. The second thing is that, in my experience, things do not necessarily go the way you expect. When I sought my pension estimate before I retired, I ended up a year later getting a less generous pension than I had anticipated, perhaps because things had changed on the underlying demographics—health or whatever. We have to be quite careful to take account of the complexity of these things in the sorts of SIs that we make. Clearly, we need to consult on them for that very reason.

[Baroness Sherlock]

On a final point of clarification, if I have heard the Minister correctly—and I will read the record—I think she is trying to reassure us that she will consult and that this will be dealt with in regulations. The problem is that Clause 14(4)(b) states that regulations may include provision,

“specifying requirements to be met by the scheme relating to its financing, such as requirements,”

et cetera. All this amendment does is insert the words, “or by an employer”, because of the concern that the Bill may allow regulations to be made requiring the scheme to put money in. We want to be sure that the Bill will require the employer, rather than the scheme, to provide the money. That is why the amendment is written as it is, accepting that the Government will have to work out what is in the regulations and then what the regulator actually did as a result. Are the Government confident that the wording of the Bill will allow them to place a requirement on the sponsoring employer to do what the Minister has described?