Industrial Action

Debate between Lord Fox and Lord Lennie

Wednesday 11th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lennie (Lab)]

My Lords, I begin with a statement of the blindingly obvious—that this is an issue of the Government’s own making. Yesterday the Minister kindly wrote to me to update me on the Government’s proposals to legislate for minimum service levels, or “minimum safety levels”, as the Statement said a couple of times. I wonder what it is. Is it “service level” or “safety level”, and is there a difference between the two?

In his letter, the Minister said that:

“The Government also has a duty to the public to ensure their safety, protect their access to vital public services and to help them go about their daily lives.”


We can all agree on that, but the Government are failing in that duty. In November, close to 40,000 patients waited more than 12 hours in A&E for a decision to be admitted to a hospital department, an increase of 350% over the previous November. In the last week of 2022, more than one-quarter of ambulance patients in England queued in the back of ambulances to be admitted to A&E—that is almost 19,000 people. A week ago, the president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine said that up to 500 people a week could be dying because of delays to emergency care, the worst he has ever seen. Yesterday an emergency medic described to the Independent newspaper how he had declared a man dead on the waiting room floor in front of his wife and members of the public after he collapsed, as the hospital had run out of beds and trolleys. These are not examples of the public’s safety being ensured, of access to vital public services being protected, or of people being helped to go about their daily lives; these are examples of the Government failing in their duty.

Strikes did not cause these situations, but the Government’s failure to prevent them are making these situations even worse. That is why this is not about public safety but about the Government playing politics to try to distract from the real issues—the economic situation that they have caused and the NHS staffing shortages. Excess deaths are at their highest levels since the pandemic peak, and the public is being put at risk every day due to the NHS crisis that the Government have presided over. The Government know that their plans will not work. What assessment have they made of the effectiveness of minimum service levels to reduce the number of strikes and disruption? The impact assessment for the Transport Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill stated that imposing minimum service levels could “increase … frequency of strikes”. Is this no longer the case? Does the Minister accept that firing highly skilled employees in essential public services would be counterproductive and would exacerbate the problems that already exist?

The Government have also been disingenuous in their arguments about bringing in these provisions. The letter that I received from the Minister also said, as has been repeated on a number of occasions by the Government, that

“this package of measures will see the UK align with many countries across the world such as France and Spain that already have minimum service levels in place, to prevent large swathes of their economies being ground to a halt by industrial action.”

While it is true that western European countries, including France, Spain and Italy, require some essential public services to keep a level of activity, in practice, when there are strikes, these levels are most often due to mutual agreements between employers and unions. In Italy, for instance, employers often defer to unions in deciding these levels. On the Paris transport network, levels are the result of voluntary agreements. The last two occasions when the French Government used their powers to force striking workers to return to work were 12 years apart. But most of all, those countries, with the laws that the Government are bringing in in this country to solve strikes, lose vastly more strike days than does Britain. Is that what the Government are really trying to achieve?

As well as referring to other countries, the Statement referred to the International Labour Organization, yet the ILO requires compensatory measures and an independent arbitrator, as well as saying that minimum service levels can happen only in services when

“the safety of individuals or their health is at stake”.

Yet the Bill that the Government have introduced does not contain those measures and allows regulations to be made in relation to transport, education services and the Border Force.

If the Government know that they cannot make these regulations without breaching ILO rules, what is this other than performative politics? What the Government should be doing is sitting down at the negotiating table and hashing out long-overdue deals that are needed to maintain our vital public services. Does the Minister accept that the Government’s failure to negotiate with workers is worsening, and will continue to worsen, the performance of public services, including adding to waiting times in the NHS? When will they return to the negotiating table to try to clear up the mess they have made?

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for taking questions on the Statement and congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Lennie, on his contribution. I will try to focus my questions and comments on how the Minister expects this to work.

The coming Bill is interesting because it introduces the concept of a minimum service level. Of course, in the Bill, the actual levels of service are not defined—true to form, this Government will come back with secondary legislation to do that. Can the Minister give your Lordships’ House at least an idea of what criteria will be used to come up with the minimum service levels? Will they be the same right across the country or will, for example, rural and urban areas have different minimum service levels? These are important issues.

There is, however, a wider issue around service levels. Taking yesterday as an example—when there were no strikes, as far as I am aware—can the Minister tell your Lordships’ House whether the tens of thousands of people waiting weeks to see their GP were getting a minimum service level? Were the people across Britain waiting sometimes tens of hours for ambulances getting a minimum service level? Were the people trying desperately to travel by train from Manchester to London experiencing a minimum service level? This is the baseline from which this legislation is working, and it is clearly not good enough. The public expect and deserve higher minimum standards than they are getting today, and on every day when there are no strikes.

Instead of addressing this issue, which I would define as the Government’s duty of care, the Bill passes the onus on to individual workers in these sectors. It is not the Ministers, the bosses or indeed the union leaders who will be sacked if the Government’s standards are not met; it is individual workers. I want briefly to illustrate this. If the Bill is enacted, the Secretary of State will impose a minimum service level. In the event of a strike, employers will be required to identify named employees who will be mandated to work via a work notice. At that point, these individuals are deprived of their right to strike on pain of probable dismissal. That does not square with the Secretary of State’s statement that this does not infringe the right to strike.

I know the Minister, and I am sure that, in his heart, he knows that a different approach is needed to deliver the service levels we need in this country. First, as was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Lennie, we need to plug the huge hole in our public sector workforce. We literally need hundreds of thousands of new people in order to deliver the basic service levels we require. A serious Government would be working with everyone in every part of these vital sectors. Can the minister tell your Lordships’ House one thing in this legislation that will help to build a bigger, better workforce in this country? Of course, a necessary first step is sorting out the pay disputes.

Turning to the NHS, the Government have absented themselves from negotiating the pay round, citing the inviolability of the pay review body. This position would have more credibility had not the Government suspended the body as recently as 2018, instead negotiating directly to deliver the 2018-21 pay agreement. What has changed since 2018 that means the Government will no longer directly negotiate with workers on this issue?

The original Bill, over the summer, targeted only rail. As we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Lennie, the impact assessment identifies more than a dozen risks and unintended consequences—not least, I hasten to add, the proliferation of sub-strike action such as overtime bans, which would cripple the NHS and is already crippling our rail services. The current Bill steps beyond the Government’s manifesto commitment and adds five more sectors. Given the differences between the two Bills, when will the Government publish an updated impact assessment?

Finally, I am sure it is extremely frustrating running a public service in the United Kingdom, but can the Minister tell us how many bosses actually asked His Majesty’s Government for this legislation? Can he point to any appetite for this beyond the Back Benches of his own party? As I said, we will take a practical approach to scrutinising this legislation when it comes to your Lordships’ House.

Commercial Rent (Coronavirus) Bill

Debate between Lord Fox and Lord Lennie

3rd reading
Tuesday 15th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lennie (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his customary courtesy and thoroughness in handling this somewhat uncontentious Bill. In fact, the Bill has been so successful that the hundreds of thousands of cases which were presumed to require arbitration are now down to either the thousands or the hundreds. They are certainly a reduced number and that is a credit to the Bill.

I place on record my appreciation for the contributions of the “Covid 2”—namely my noble friend Lady Blake and the noble Earl, Lord Lytton—who both provided detailed research, experience and commitment during the passage of the Bill, latterly from afar.

Finally, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Fox, in particular for his detailed understanding of the complexity of the Bill. I also thank the Bill team for their work and efforts in getting this Bill in shape. While we still do not know what the term “viable” means and whether there will be a sufficiency to arbitrate, time will tell—time which I have now run out of.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, this has been a short process, but an interesting and important Bill. It is important for those businesses which found their entire business model cancelled by something over which they had no control. It is important that we find a way for those businesses to secure their future by sorting out the past. I think the Minister would agree with me that the overriding principle of this Bill has been to ring-fence the debt and then, through an arbitration process, share in the impact of that debt. I am pleased to see that the Minister is nodding as I say that.

The Minister has been sensitive to the advice he has got, and I am very pleased that the Government were able to agree with the Welsh Government on how this Bill would apply in Wales.

There was a period at Report when the number of Bill officials outnumbered the number of Peers two to one. Having heard the list that the Minister has just totted off, I can see that not all of them were there even then—but thanks to the Bill team for the hard work that it put in, and thanks to the Minister and the noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield, as well as the noble Lord, Lord Lennie, and the noble Baroness, Lady Blake. Because of Covid and dentists, we found ourselves depleted several times during this process, but I also thank my noble friend Lord Shipley—and, back in the Whips’ Office, keeping the legislative process on track, Sarah Pughe.

Commercial Rent (Coronavirus) Bill

Debate between Lord Fox and Lord Lennie

Report stage
Wednesday 9th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lennie (Lab)]

My Lords, Amendment 2 builds on the debate in Committee. The House will be pleased that I will not repeat all the arguments put forward then, but it is worth saying at the outset that this amendment is in response to severe pressures that businesses, tenants and landlords are under following an extremely difficult trading winter, plus the economic pressures of national insurance increases, energy price rises and escalated inflation. The clock is ticking loudly.

Arbitrators will be dealing with the cases that could not be resolved through voluntary measures between the parties. These will include in the main the most complex, as well as those where a failure to act was in the hope that debt would just disappear. As a point of interest, it would be beneficial to know from which sectors these outstanding cases come—not geographically, but from which sectors of economic activity. Perhaps the Minister could respond.

In Committee, the Minister—whom I paraphrase—told us not to worry about the arbitration service and that all would be well and sorted out in due course. Can he tell us what his optimism is based on? Have the Government made an assessment about the demands that will be made on the service, beyond simply the number of outstanding cases? If so, can we see the evidence of that assessment? Also in Committee, the Minister said that the Government supported the market-based approach in which arbitration firms would move things around to get over the expected spike in demand. The Minister said that he had been reassured by the arbitration firms of their ability to cope. But, without a detailed assessment or understanding of both the volume and complexity of cases, coupled with a change in the nature of the work that arbitrators will be asked to carry out—which the noble Lord, Lord Fox, will introduce in a later amendment, on behalf of the noble Earl, Lord Lytton—this would appear to be wishful thinking.

If in reality there is either an insufficient number of arbitrators, or too many complex cases, or both, this reliance of the market-based approach may be something the Government come to regret. So will they keep the progress in clearing the backlog of cases under review and report back to Parliament from time to time? I have no doubt about the quality and excellence of the arbitration service itself across the whole of the UK, but we are concerned that the Government have not undertaken an assessment of the numbers and the resources available in order to be fully satisfied that all arbitrations can be conducted in good time.

Amendment 15 proposes that, when the Government issue guidance to arbitrators aimed at enabling better outcomes, Parliament should be informed. Some concern has been expressed, in particular by small businesses, that the draft guidance produced may not be fully appropriate to the arbitration process. This is turn raises the prospect that arbitrators’ decisions are likely to be distorted. So Amendment 15 adds a layer to safeguard against such an occurrence by asking the Government to bring statutory guidance to Parliament before it is issued. In both the Commons and in Committee we raised the need for a review of the Bill’s provisions to ensure that the process is being applied transparently, fairly and consistently. While we may not have convinced the Government to include a specific review mechanism, can the Minister assure the House that the operation of the Bill will be carefully monitored?

Finally, on the many thorny questions of viability, can the Minister tell us what engagement is being undertaken with stakeholders to stress test the Government’s draft guidance on this to make sure that it is fit for purpose? I look forward to the noble Lord’s response.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 2 and 15 in my name. Amendment 2 is important because it is important to have the arbitrators in place to deliver this service. The purpose of Amendment 15 is to probe the guidance notes, because in Committee that guidance was out for consultation. It is important to get a chance to air some of the issues thrown up from it and to get a sense from the Minister of where we are and when your Lordships’ House will see the final draft—I hesitate to use the phrase “final draft”, because I hope he can confirm that it is a live document and will develop over time alongside experience of this process.

The noble Lord talked about stress testing. It would be helpful if the Minister, during the process of monitoring the guidelines, talked to those who have been involved in arbitration about their experience so that they can be improved over time. Can he confirm that he will?

The Government’s instinct to try to keep this simple is correct, but sometimes simplicity can leave ambiguity. I think some of that has come through in the responses they may well have received. One way of removing that ambiguity is better use of templates, which is one of the responses I have received from people on this. Can the guidelines be better used to genuinely short-circuit the process and therefore reduce costs for the proponents’ way?

A second real issue is the definition of “viability”. We had a debate on that at Second Reading and in Committee; I do not propose to return to it, but there are issues around viability that concern businesses, particularly seasonal ones. There is scope within the guidelines—I have been given this advice by some seasonal businesses—to better define the role of seasonality when looking at the viability of these businesses. I would appreciate the Minister’s thoughts on those issues.

Finally, there is an underlying suspicion from some tenants that large-scale landlords, some of whom have experience in previous types of dispute, will game the system and use their financial muscle to take advantage. They fear that these well-resourced landlords will go for the most expensive options, bid up the costs and put the process beyond the means of small independent traders. Will the Minister ensure that the arbitrators are vigilant in this regard? I would be a bit hesitant here, because there is a potential conflict of interest for those arbitrators—the bigger the job, the larger the potential fee. We then come to important issues around fees. The Minister needs to set very clear guidelines to the arbitrators on that issue, such that they are not bidding up the process or creating the opportunity for big companies to flex their financial muscle.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, I rise to speak on behalf of the noble Earl, Earl Lytton, who, as previously advertised, is the second member of the “Covid 2” in this team. His absence is disappointing for two reasons. First, he is not here to make these speeches and I have to do so on his behalf, and secondly, his wisdom on the issue of property is second to few in your Lordships’ House. The nature of these amendments points to the direction of the advice that he would have given your Lordships’ House had he been here, and I will do my best to represent that. I am given to understand that the amendments that the noble Earl tabled are supported by the RICS, which focuses their purpose.

I will speak to them in groups. In the Clause 8 amendments, the noble Earl’s point is that the appointing body that oversees the function should not carry out more than a general monitoring of the administrative good order of the process. The reason behind the noble Earl’s point is that he is anxious to ensure that the terms of Arbitration Act 1996 are not circumvented, so perhaps the Minister can set the Bill in this context with respect to the Act.

At the heart of the Clause 10 amendments is the expectation that the appointing bodies do not materially alter their screening and selection processes. The noble Earl’s point is that on potential conflicts of interest, they are almost wholly reliant on self-disclosure by potential appointees, so they would frequently have no means of checking the responses for accuracy. I would welcome the Minister’s view on this.

The purpose of the Clause 19 and Clause 20 amendments is to make it permissible in a complex case, or cases, for the appointing body to demand from the parties that a clear statement of the issues and scope of evidence be placed before the arbitrator. Any fee specified in advance should be able to rely on the statement, but also on providing a broad estimate of the applicable arbitrator time and rate, where a fixed fee is impractical. I think what the noble Earl is driving at is that the arbitrators should not be signing a blank cheque for the work they are going to do; they deserve to have a scope to understand what it is they will be arbitrating.

Those are the groupings as the noble Earl set out. For my part, I hope to hear how the Minister and his department will balance these important points from the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, and the RICS, with the need to keep things as simple and cost-effective as possible. I think this is possible but I want to hear how the Government will absorb these two issues. I beg to move Amendment 3.

[Lord Lennie (Lab)]

The noble Lord, Lord Fox, raises the central concerns of the struck-ill noble Earl, Lord Lytton, about the expectations of arbitrators. I would add that he seemed to suggest in Committee that the role of arbitrators in this legislation is inconsistent with the expectation of arbitrators in the Arbitration Act—that is, they decide either one way or the other between two competing cases, rather than trying to filter between the cases to find some remedy between the two.

[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise—I was caught short by the speed with which we are moving through these amendments. Before I respond to these points, I thank the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, for the amendments he tabled. I think everybody who heard him in Committee was impressed by his erudition. I am sorry he is not able to join us to debate these points, but on behalf of the House I thank the noble Lord, Lord Fox, for stepping into the breach and for his impressive grasp of the technical matters underlying these amendments.

I start by saying that I am fully aware of the concerns of arbitration bodies seeking approval under the Bill and my officials have been in continual contact with them to ensure that their views are registered and dealt with appropriately.

The Bill differs in some aspects from the Arbitration Act 1996, and provides that approved arbitration bodies have oversight over arbitrators where they have appointed them. In answer to the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, this was deliberate, and it gives certainty to landlords and tenants that arbitration will be managed efficiently and any issues with the process dealt with expeditiously. I can assure noble Lords that the oversight function is not intended to be onerous and is primarily administrative to ensure that the process runs smoothly. We do not expect bodies to continually monitor proceedings, but only step in where a party has a legitimate complaint or new information comes to light, raising a concern. I hope this reassures the noble Lord, Lord Fox.

Under the Bill, arbitration bodies can decide on unilateral removal requests, and this was also deliberate to avoid adding to pressure on the court system. The bodies should apply the same principles in case law as the court, including that there is a high bar to removing an arbitrator, and the parties should raise any concerns promptly. Frivolous, vexatious or unsubstantiated complaints should be quickly dismissed. Complaints of any substance should be rare, given the rigorous pre-appointment checks that bodies will doubtless carry out. I am pleased to clarify the point raised by the noble Earl in Committee: it is open to the approved arbitration bodies to charge a fee for dealing with a removal application. The intention is that this may disincentivise frivolous or vexatious complaints. In addition, the arbitrator can require an obstructive party to pay a greater share of the arbitration fees. We will include this clarification in the guidance to which I referred earlier.

I appreciate that there is concern about the extent to which arbitration bodies have immunity in respect of their functions. This is an important point that has been raised; I am considering it and will return to this issue at Third Reading.

Employment Rights

Debate between Lord Fox and Lord Lennie

Thursday 10th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lennie (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, workers face a real crisis of insecurity and a lack of protections, but the proposals announced in this Statement will do little to turn around the record of inaction from the Government. Whether it is dropping the employment Bill, allowing 2 million people to be paid below the minimum wage or indeed leaving the post of Director of Labour Market Enforcement vacant for months, the Government’s rhetoric on workers’ rights simply fails to match reality. We see this again today.

There is no plan for when the legislation for the single enforcement body will come to Parliament, despite three-quarters of respondents in the consultation stating that the current enforcement system is ineffective. As the Government said that the new body will

“significantly improve the Government’s ability to protect vulnerable workers and ensure they receive their employment rights”,

can the Minister confirm that the Bill is a priority and will at least be published this year?

There is no new money to merge three existing bodies into a single organisation with a significantly expanded remit. The consultation response states that the current funding will be “used more effectively”, but more funding for its new responsibilities, such as

“enforcement of holiday pay for vulnerable workers”,

is yet to be considered. So can the Minister explain how effective the body will be across all its responsibilities without additional support?

The most glaring omission in this plan is that many of the most exploitative employment practices will remain perfectly legal. Bogus self-employment denies millions of workers in the gig economy basic protections and rights. On fire and rehire, the Minister said:

“This Government have always been clear that we do not accept fire and rehire as a negotiation tactic.”


But the weak promise of further guidance only kicks the can further down the road.

Almost three million people—one in 10—have been subjected to fire and rehire since last March. This will not stop until this morally wrong and economically illiterate practice is outlawed. So will the Minister commit to giving workers full employment rights to ensure that everybody has dignity and security at work?

The Statement also reconfirms that the Government are determined to hobble trade unions, which are the best mechanism for protecting workers’ rights. The proposal to give the certification officer powers to commission investigations and fine trade unions even when there has been no complaint from a member—funded by a levy on trade unions—is an attack on working people and seeks to solve a problem that simply does not exist. Why are the Government not following President Biden’s proposals—he is here in the country—to empower trade unions to rejuvenate the American economy and raise living standards? If Ministers really want to do whatever they can to protect and enhance workers’ rights, they need to stop overpromising and start delivering for working people.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. This is a relatively small, long-overdue step towards upholding workers’ rights, and to that extent it is welcome. However, it comes with no parliamentary time allocated for legislation and no new funding.

There was a glaring hole in the Queen’s Speech. After a pandemic that has made life extremely hard for many people, it is disappointing that the Government are yet to announce an employment Bill to strengthen workers’ rights and to make the rules fit for modern working practice.

A single enforcement agency is welcome but, unless we look again at people’s working conditions and the rules in place, this agency—when it eventually emerges—will not be able to deliver the change that people need in their lives. To do that, it needs proper funding. For example, the International Labour Organization recommends that Governments have one inspector per 10,000 workers. In the UK the current funding is for 0.4, so can the Minister tell your Lordships’ House if and when the new agency will be funded to deliver ILO levels of inspection?

When an illusionist is practising their art, the key skill is misdirection. In this case, our attention is in danger of being distracted by decent and welcome words condemning the practice of fire and rehire. Meanwhile, the Government have conflated employment abuses with measures to crack down on trade unions. While there may be some issues in a small number of unions, they are not the cause of the problems faced by so many families. It is sharp employment practice that is taking UK families to the edge, not trade unions, so my next question to the Minister is: how do the Parliamentary Under-Secretary’s words in this Statement help people who right now are being fired and taken back on downgraded working contracts? This Statement condemns the practice, but now the Government have asked for a further report on the subject. This is kicking it into the long grass. When will the Government actually do something to help workers?

More broadly, in October 2016 the Government commissioned Matthew Taylor to carry out an independent review of the UK employment framework. The Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices found that the labour market was changing due to the emergence of new business models and different forms of gig economy working; the Minister knows about this very well. It proposed many important measures to help support people’s jobs in those sectors. These measures received a broad welcome, and indeed warm words flowed from the Benches opposite. In their last manifesto, the Conservatives undertook to implement many of the report’s findings—yet it still gathers dust. Mr Taylor became interim Director of Labour Market Enforcement in August 2019, but then in January this year he announced that he was leaving and the role was not refilled. So have the Government abandoned their pledge to implement the Taylor review?

With or without Taylor, things need to change—and quickly. When will we see an end to the toxic practice of delivery workers being required to drive illegally so that they can meet their quotas? When will we see an end to people being forced to skip bathroom breaks? When will nearly two in five workers get more than a week’s notice of their working hours? When will gig economy workers get the wages they deserve—for example, the 20% higher minimum wage for people on zero-hours contracts? Because this is the real world of work that is facing many people right now.

Speaking in the Commons, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary said:

“Nothing is off the table.”—[Official Report, Commons, 8/6/21; col. 849.]


Actually, for the poorest, most exploited workers there is nothing on the table. These are words. When will we see some action?

Corporate Insolvency and Governance Bill

Debate between Lord Fox and Lord Lennie

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard) & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 23rd June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Fox]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken in this important debate. I am a signatory to Amendment 15 and I thank my noble friend Lady Bowles, the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, and the noble Lord, Lord Hain, for co-signing it. I join other Peers in acknowledging that the Government have moved in terms of listening to the previous debate and going forward, but the issue that Amendment 15 seeks to address is a serious one. If this Bill went through without the sorts of assurances that we are looking for from the Minister, or remained unamended, that would create a huge issue for pension trustees all over the country. Never mind the ones that are going into insolvency—as the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, set out so eloquently, every single pension trustee would revisit every single pledged asset and would go back to the management of their sponsoring companies to ask for cash instead. I do not need to remind the Minister that cash flow is one of the biggest challenges facing businesses at the moment; it is actually cash that is the problem. To knowingly put in a measure that will drain profitable businesses of cash would be careless, and I do not think that that is what the Government are doing. I think this is an unknowing consequence of the Bill.

To be clear, this concerns assets that have already been pledged. When the Minister spoke earlier, he seemed to be referring to assets being pledged at the time of insolvency, but these are assets which have been pledged in lieu of cash. Given that, I am a little bemused by the idea put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, that the Pension Protection Fund would somehow be overreaching itself in seeking to protect these funds for pensioners and that it would be giving the PPF too much power. Rather, it is merely the power to protect assets that have been signed over to the pension fund. If they were not assets such as those set out by the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann—real estate and securities—then it would be money. I do not think that the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, is proposing that the courts should have the power to extract money from pension funds, so why should they not have the power to protect against judges extracting assets that have been put aside in lieu of money?

The noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, put a clear question to the Minister, one that I think is very apposite to this point. Does the PPF have the power to prevent judges extracting pledged assets from pension funds and putting them into the pool of assets for distribution to other creditors? If the Minister is able to stand up and say that clearly and unambiguously—for those Members watching remotely, it does not look like he is—there is no problem. However, if the Bill leaves this House unamended or without that pledge, this issue will become a very serious one not just for the pension funds of distressed companies but for every defined benefit pension fund in the country.

[Lord Lennie (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, straight off the bat, I too welcome the Government’s movement on this specific part of this necessary Bill. There will be a sense of relief for direct benefit pension funds and their trustees, the Pension Protection Fund and the regulator. As has been said, all will now have rights of access to information about the intentions of companies and to voice their opinions about the decisions that are being contemplated; a seat at the table, access to court and so forth. This will be true throughout the UK.

When a company seeks a moratorium or when it considers other actions in a potential redundancy and insolvency circumstance, the monitor will be required to notify the pension scheme, the PPF and the regulator to have due consideration of their views about the proposed action. In the event that a moratorium comes to an end or if the monitor changes, the pension scheme trustees and the PPF must be informed. This will mean in effect that the debts owing to a direct benefit pension scheme do not rank below other finance debts. That would recognise the real status of a pension as deferred earnings and should not allow others to accelerate the debt position at the expense of pension provision, as was feared in the original text. These changes have come about due to the strength of the arguments put by my noble friends Lady Drake and Lady Warwick, the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, on the Liberal Democrat Benches, and the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, and the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, on the Conservative side. I congratulate them on achieving this much.

However, can the Minister provide the reassurance being sought about the value of direct benefit schemes being put at risk by the sale of assets, and ultimately the whole working of the PPF? Will he closely monitor and consult on any necessary remedial actions that may arise from his examination of this issue? The Minister can take the credit due to him for his part in bringing forward these amendments to the Bill, and they are welcome. But can he confirm that the Government will stay alert and ready to intervene on behalf of pensions and the PPF in the event that the measures in this legislation do not go far enough in protecting them?