Trade Bill

Debate between Baroness Altmann and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Consideration of Commons amendments & Ping Pong (Hansard) & Ping Pong (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 2nd February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Altmann (Con)]

My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment C1, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and the very similar Amendments C2 and C3, in the names of my noble friends Lord Forsyth and Lord Cormack. I echo the tributes paid to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for his dedicated work on this issue and his powerful and moving speech.

As the child of two parents who fled the Holocaust, and most of whose family was wiped out by the Nazi regime, I feel duty-bound to do my best to ensure that the repeated promises of “never again” are more than mere words. Just a few days after Holocaust Memorial Day, there are lessons that we should have learned from the genocides of the 20th century, but too often we turn a blind eye, as this is so much easier.

I recognise my noble friend the Minister’s words, that our courts can find individuals guilty of genocide, but this will not cover Governments which engage in such behaviour. It is all too easy to appease and to look for ways to avoid confrontation. Of course, there is a place for diplomacy, but if there are no consequences, in trade and other areas, for a country whose Government engage in such behaviour, then they can continue with impunity. Such impunity will lead to further crimes against humanity.

We are living in an increasingly authoritarian world, as powerful countries are crushing domestic dissent and those who oppose the ruling power. The lessons of World War II are being forgotten, but they must not be. I mention just one of the horrific concentration camps, Ravensbrück, which began as a labour camp that was, uniquely, exclusively for women opponents of Nazism in the 1930s. It ended up as a forced labour camp producing goods for powerful German companies and then also as a camp for the industrialised death of innocent victims.

There are clearly parallels today in Xinjiang, where what is happening to Uighur Muslims should provide a reason for our Government to support an opportunity to ask our courts to investigate this. As others have said, clearly China would just veto an ICC inquiry. This cannot just be left to the Executive. There is no excuse for inaction in the face of such evil in the 21st century. I echo the words of Chief Rabbi Mirvis that we must not be silent, and I believe that these amendments also uphold the Government’s stated aim of putting victims first. The Government now have the chance to do so.

As it prioritises trade, this amendment has a specific focus. It aims to ensure that in the tiny number of cases—thankfully, today—where our trading partner or prospective partner is committing genocide and this determination is made by our courts, the Government will have the reason, and the power, not to continue to negotiate or co-operate on trade. No matter how important trade and economic prosperity are to us in the short term, it cannot be worth being complicit in genocide and, in the long run, it will damage us all. This country increasingly favours ethical trade and, as other nobles have said, this is a matter of morality and values. Trade cannot be prioritised over genocide.

A parliamentary Select Committee is not enough on its own; it would still need to have the power to refer this to a court. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, has confirmed that there are no practical difficulties in courts evaluating evidence of genocide. This has been echoed by the powerful words of so many other noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay, Supreme Court judges and former Attorney-Generals. They are all united in the view that this issue can and should be determined by the courts. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister himself has said that

“genocide is a strict legal term, and we hesitate to deploy it without a proper judicial decision.”—[Official Report, Commons, 21/11/17; col. 839.]

Precisely, my Lords, which is why it is important for us to support Amendment C1.

The concession made by the Government this afternoon—I have huge sympathy for my noble friend the Minister in the position in which he finds himself today—does not provide for a court ruling on this issue and would therefore not trigger the UK’s obligations under Article 2 of the 1948 genocide convention. I believe this country has never recognised genocide while it was taking place. This amendment would take the pressure away from politicians and place it with the courts, of which we are rightly so proud; they are world-leading authorities in legal matters.

These are complex problems, but I urge noble Lords to support this amendment and remember that, as Edmund Burke said, all it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to be silent.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, it is always good to follow my noble friend Lady Altmann, who speaks on these issues with such eloquence. As noble Lords will know, I have supported this Bill, and its promotion by Department for International Trade Ministers since its first outing in 2017. It is vital to have a proper framework for trade in global Britain. I refer to my interests as in the register, and perhaps I could remind noble Lords that the purpose of the Bill is a sensible one: to ensure continuity for UK businesses and consumers. It allows us to join the GPA to implement 63 agreements and establish the Trade and Agriculture Commission on a statutory basis, as well as our own independent Trade Remedies Authority. There is a wide measure of agreement on all this, and this is the only time I will speak on the Bill today.

Pension Schemes Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Altmann and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard) & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 30th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Altmann [V]]

My Lords, I have added my name to these amendments in the names of my noble friends Lady Noakes and Lady Neville-Rolfe. I congratulate my noble friend Lady Noakes on the way she introduced this amendment.

There are valid concerns around the wording of the good intentions of this Bill to introduce criminal offences or financial penalties for avoiding employer debt or risking member-accrued benefits. But it is right to express some concerns that this should apply only if the person is either an employer or associated with the employer, so that professional advisers cannot be held criminally liable, nor banks just making loans in the ordinary course of business, nor even insurers for mistakes made in underfunding the pension scheme.

I welcome the long-overdue extension of the Pensions Regulator’s powers contained in this Bill, which can punish wilful or reckless behaviour and non-compliance with contribution notices and so on. I also welcome the intention to deter bad practice by scheme employers, and indeed scheme trustees from undermining their pension scheme. It is right to have a criminal offence, but, as currently written, the provisions under Clause 107 could criminalise anyone who deals with a pension scheme. I do not believe that is the intention, and it could leave parties reluctant to deal with a business because of its pension scheme, which could in turn jeopardise the ongoing solvency of the company. Therefore, I would welcome some reassurance from the Minister that this will not be the outcome of this legislation.

Some might say that advisers should surely share the responsibility were there to be attempts to avoid pension debt. I have some sympathy with this. So, once again, will my noble friend reassure us that this Bill will not see those acting in good faith being caught out by the actions of an employer, or even perhaps of complicit trustees who might act in ways that are detrimental to the scheme? I hope that this reassurance can be forthcoming.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I support my noble friends Lady Noakes and Lady Altmann and the strong case they have made for these amendments. Noble Lords may recall that at Second Reading on 28 January I expressed some doubts about the scale and nature of the penalties in this Bill, which include a civil penalty of up to £1 million. I am still concerned that increasing them, especially the new criminal element, will deter the respectable people we need from becoming pension scheme trustees.

The world has been changed by the challenges of the coronavirus, as we have just heard. According to Patrick Hosking in the Times yesterday, using figures from pension experts Barnett Waddingham, FTSE pension deficits have soared by £45 billion to £210 billion since the start of the year, so that companies that have a deficit are now a good deal further away from closing it. This is an enormous strain on mostly well-run companies and schemes and reflects years of low interest rates caused by QE and turbulent equity markets. Who would want to get involved in pension administration? Yet its success is at the heart of the British savings system and vital to the future livelihoods of millions of hard-working people, often of modest means, up and down the country.

The Bill rightly reflects the need to plug a hole revealed by the Philip Green case and the furious debate in Parliament before Sir Philip was persuaded to pay up. However, as is often the case with legislation that responds to scandals, it is wide-ranging and takes enormous powers. It goes too far in my view towards burdening business at the expense of other stakeholders. The result will be less willingness to become a trustee and more administrative and other costs for pension schemes paid for, in the end, by the unfortunate pensioners, and the risk of more businesses being pushed into the Pension Protection Fund. This is the background to my unease with Clause 107 and why I moved an amendment in Committee with the help of my noble friend Lady Noakes, and why I now support her and my noble friend Lady Altmann with these amendments.

The criminal offences in Clause 107 are widely drawn. They try to catch bad behaviour by anyone who might be involved. But I maintain that this may have appalling perverse effects, injecting great uncertainty into what is permitted behaviour by those involved in pensions administration. My principal concern is with trustees, having been one and knowing what fine judgments one is called to make, but also with financial advisers, actuaries, accountants, insurers, property consultants and even secretarial support, all acting in good faith. It is one thing to provide for criminal sanctions against an employer, but wrong to extend this in such a vague and general way. A number of suggestions were made in Committee as to how one might tackle this, but disappointingly the Government have not listened—or not so far.

These new criminal offences will have a chilling effect on trustees and others involved, as my noble friend Lady Noakes explained, and I ask my noble friend the Minister to agree to think again and to narrow the very wide offences in this Bill to provide some comfort, either in this House or when it proceeds to the other place.

Corporate Insolvency and Governance Bill

Debate between Baroness Altmann and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

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

[Baroness Altmann [V]]

My Lords, I will be brief. I very much support the wise words of my noble friend Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts and the noble Lord, Lord Vaux. I welcome Amendments 37 and 38, and I cannot quite understand the reluctance of the Government to agree to this amendment; I know that there has been significant discussion on it.

Clearly, any pre-pack can have positive effects, but the transparency and oversight issues, particularly in the current emergency environment, surely require some modicum of independent oversight. We have the pool ready to go and are in a position where we could anticipate problems, rather than trying to deal with them after they have arisen, when it is too late for the small creditors that could be so damaged by the egregious practices that we in this House have all heard about, and many noble Lords have previously explained.

I hope that my noble friend can give sufficient reassurances to the House on this issue. However, I will support Amendment 45, should that not be possible.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe [V]]

My Lords, I thank the Minister very warmly for accepting the amendment on pre-packs that I put down in Committee, on which I had the help of the British Property Federation. The amendment was designed to restore the power in the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act. Amendments 37 and 38 have been drafted by parliamentary counsel and use a much more elegant formula to amend the original Insolvency Act, but to the same effect and with the same deadline of June 2021. I would like an assurance from my noble friend the Minister that that power will be used and that it will be able to deal with some of the pre-pack issues.

I would like to thank my noble friend Lord Hodgson, who has demonstrated his admirable virtuosity—he is not merely an expert on pubs and demography, as the House knows, but on insolvency, as well as many other things. I also support the thrust of his amendment. I should add that, without his oratory and argument last week, we would not have made the progress that we have.

Pension Schemes Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Altmann and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 26th February 2020 Grand Committee

[Baroness Altmann (Con)]

My Lords, I rise briefly—I have added my name to one of the amendments—to support the concept that has been so well explained already by noble Lords and to echo the warnings that this is a very important time in our defined benefit pension system, as we still have employers attached to schemes and, in some cases, members contributing. Some schemes are still not completely closed. Once a scheme has closed to new members, it will not be too long before it closes to new accruals and it will effectively be in run-off. While there are still employers with an interest in the scheme and before we get to the period, which will come in the next 10 years or so, when there is no economic interest between the employer and the scheme and it is seen merely as a major liability—with more and more companies looking for ways to get around the deficits—now is the time to be collecting as much money as possible.

Obviously, one does not want to damage the ongoing viability of the employer, but there needs to be more recognition of the fact that the pension scheme is a debtor of the company—not all companies see it in that way—and the choice between dividend payment and deficit funding should not be just between the interest of shareholders and the interest of pension scheme members. The pension deficit has people’s lives attached, so there is a higher importance here.

When one looks at the provisions of the Companies Act 2006, in particular with reference to Amendment 84, Section 830 says that a company should not be permitted to pay out a dividend if it has not made sufficient profit to cover its costs or if there are losses in the company. What is not explicit, but is made explicit in the amendment, which was originally part of my noble friend Lord Balfe’s Private Member’s Bill, is that the accounting measure of the pension deficit does not reflect the actuarial reality as estimated by a scheme actuary, or perhaps by trustees, of the true scale of the obligation—in other words, potential losses—that the company faces. Therefore, redefining the accounting measure and taking account of the actuarial measure would put the payment of dividend on a different plane. That is to be reflected in Section 830A, which would be added after Section 830, in terms of justification for payment of a dividend that might otherwise look viable.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I look forward to hearing what my noble friend the Minister says about this and whether the sort of concerns that have been expressed are already dealt with somewhere else. A very good point has been made.

I want to ask a question on Amendment 27, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Vaux. He talks about the value of the assets of the scheme, and my noble friend Lady Altmann made this point; there is a big difference between an actuarial valuation and an insurance valuation in a scheme. If you were to base this on an insurance valuation, you would catch quite a lot of pension schemes, including those which probably could pay some dividends. I was a little concerned about that, and I would like some clarification when we come to wind up on what is intended.