Pension Schemes Bill [HL]

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 2nd March 2020 Grand Committee

Relevant documents: 4th Report from the Delegated Powers Committee and 2nd Report from the Constitution Committee

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)]

My Lords, if there is a Division in the Chamber while we are sitting, the Committee will adjourn as soon as the Division Bells are rung and resume after 10 minutes.

Clause 118: Qualifying pensions dashboard service

Amendment 38

Moved by

Pension Schemes Bill [HL]

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

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

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords—[Inaudible.]

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)]

We will move on because we cannot hear the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. We will perhaps try to get her back later. I call the noble Baroness, Lady Janke.

[Baroness Janke (LD) [V]]

I took my name off the list.

[The Deputy Speaker]

I did not have a note of that. I call the noble Lord, Lord Balfe.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, this is the first time for two months that I have been in this Chamber. It is a bit emptier than normal but it is good to be back.

I hoped to speak after the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, because I want to say a few words about her Amendment 33, which is about trustees. It seeks to require trustees to take age, gender and ethnicity into account. I will certainly not support or oppose this amendment but I want to make a few points on trustees and where I think she is trying to get us to. The fact of the matter is that the whole area around the appointment of trustees could do with a close look.

There are a number of problems. The first problem for any pension scheme, particularly a small one, is getting trustees from among the membership. You can always get a professional trustee because they are normally paid £1,000 or more a day for coming to the meeting, so it is not too difficult. The difficulty is getting representatives of the pensioners. The second and even greater difficulty is getting representatives of the pensioners who actually know what they are talking about, because many people are completely bewildered by pensions.

When I read through both this amendment and the amendments about ESG and environmental safeguards, I was reminded very much of pensioners who come to me and say, “All I want, Richard, is for you to pay my pension. I couldn’t care less where it comes from.” I say, “Presumably you wouldn’t like us to invest in gas ovens,” and they say, “Well, no, but you’ve got enough common sense not to do that. You don’t need me to tell you.”

So I come to the point that, when we are looking at the age, gender and ethnicity of trustees, we also need to look at their qualifications and the way in which they are allowed to come forward, because some trustee boards are effectively self-perpetuating because they govern who is allowed to stand. You are invited to apply to become a trustee, and then you are assessed as to whether you are able to become a trustee. Often, people who come forward are not highly professionally qualified, but they are qualified in one thing, which is common sense. My experience of pensions, which goes back quite a long way, is that certainly some members on a board—not a majority—who can demonstrate common sense are extremely good.

I would also like to say that dealing particularly with gender and ethnicity can lead you into many problems. My wife gets a pension from the Workers’ Educational Association pension fund. It got itself tied into complete knots trying to deal with ethnicity and gender. It ended up asking people to vote for trustees who were anonymised. They were anonymised by taking out not only their name, age, gender and ethnicity but also most of the other things about them. So the great game in this case was to look back at previous reports and try to work out which trustee was the anonymised one. Of course, that gets you nowhere and in fact is a bit of an insult to the members who have applied.

So I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and to the Minister that this is a subject that is much wider than this amendment, but it is certainly one that needs looking at. The way in which pensioners are represented on the governing boards of pension funds is haphazard, to put it mildly. It varies enormously between funds. Although there is a great cry from professional trustees that you clearly need professionals in the room, I counsel the Minister and everybody else to beware of the cry for the professional. It is very easy to get a professional to sit there and give you advice as an employee or if they are hired for the purpose. You do not necessarily need more than the odd one of them actually on the board. They have nothing great to add than cannot be added by a professional adviser. They do not need a place on the board, although sometimes—note the word “sometimes”—having a professional trustee as a chair can add a certain amount of discipline, knowledge and structure to the way that debates go. But it can be overestimated and, particularly since the pensions industry is dominated by the professionals, there is a great danger that it gets overemphasised because it is precisely the people who write in the pensions papers who are the experts and who then promote themselves for the jobs.

So I welcome the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett; I see it just as a probing amendment, laying down a few guidelines that we could look at. I say to the Minister that when there is an opportunity, it would be well worth while to set up some sort of study or working group to look at the way in which trustees are chosen or appointed, how they work and how they are remunerated.

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[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.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)]

Lord Naseby has withdrawn, so I call Lord Blencathra. No? I gather that there have been some problems, so I call the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard.

[Viscount Trenchard (Con)]

My Lords, while the Bill has generally been welcomed by the pensions industry and members of pension schemes, I worry that it may give the Pensions Regulator too much power. The new criminal offences contained in Clause 107 affect not only employers and senior associates of pension schemes. They could apply to anyone involved in such schemes: for example, trustees, banks and insurers. I therefore support Amendments 46 to 49, proposed by my noble friend Lady Noakes so eloquently and so well supported by my noble friends Lady Altmann and Lady Neville-Rolfe, which confine the new criminal offences to the employer and persons connected with the employer. It is absolutely right that the Government have acted to ensure that failures such as that of Carillion and BHS will no longer have a negative effect on members of pension schemes.

The offences created in Clause 107 are serious. They carry a potential seven years’ imprisonment and a civil penalty up to a maximum of £1 million. It is therefore right that these offences should apply as broadly as they do, but they should be limited in effect to the employer and the trustees of the pension scheme concerned. These penalties seem proportionate to the gravity of the crimes in certain cases, but both offences apply very broadly to “persons”, with no requirement for association with the pension scheme. The Government’s intention may be that the measures are there to catch wilful and reckless behaviour, but the problem is that their potential ambit is wider—much wider—than just the reckless.

As currently drafted, the criminal offences could impact ordinary pensions and business activity, and, in distressed situations, they might act as a disincentive to corporate or business rescue—for example, by encouraging directors to file for insolvency to avoid the risk of criminal liability that might arise through seeking a turnaround plan or a pension scheme compromise. So far, attempts at making the measures clearer and more targeted have not succeeded. Regulator guidance on how the new powers will be used has been promised, but this has no special status in law.

The Pensions Regulator is not the only possible prosecutor in Clause 107 offences, as the noble Lord, Lord Hutton, eloquently pointed out in Committee. My noble friend Lord Howe explained that the Secretary of State would prosecute only as a last resort, such as if the regulator ceased to exist or changed. I find it hard to envisage that in such circumstances the whole of the current pensions legislation would not be changed.

I think that it is necessary to confine those who might commit these two new offences to connected parties; otherwise, many other persons might unwittingly, or unintentionally, become exposed to prosecution. For example, the fund manager of a pension scheme, in handling investments entrusted to him by the trustees of the scheme, might make investments or realise sales that negatively affect the value of a pension fund’s assets.

I think that these amendments are very sensible and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s reply.

[The Deputy Speaker]

The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, has withdrawn. Have we had any success in finding the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra? Alas, no, in which case I call the Minister, the noble Earl, Lord Howe.

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[The Deputy Speaker]

We now come to the group beginning with Amendment 50. I remind noble Lords that Members other than the mover and the Minister may speak only once and that short questions of elucidation are discouraged. Anyone wishing to press this or the other amendment in this group to a Division should make that clear in the debate.

Clause 109: Duty to give notices and statements to the Regulator in respect of certain events

Amendment 50

Moved by

Pension Schemes Bill [HL]

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments & Ping Pong (Hansard) & Ping Pong (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 19th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vaux of Harrowden (CB) [V]]

My Lords, we had lengthy discussions on Report around the concern that a one-size-fits-all derisking policy could render uneconomic otherwise healthy defined benefit schemes which remain open, and which are not close to maturity. The noble Baronesses, Lady Bowles and Lady Sherlock, have already described the issue in better detail than I ever could, so I will not repeat the case, but it would be a great shame if a laudable intent to derisk had the unintended consequence of leading to the premature end of healthy, well-run defined benefit schemes, which are of particular importance to lower-paid employees. I know that this is not the intention of the Government, as the Minister has just restated; I am confident that the Minister will be able to set our minds at rest by confirming the points asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, and that Divisions on Motions 4A and 4C will not be necessary.

As this is likely to be the last time I speak on the Bill, I hope the House will not mind if I take the opportunity to put on record my thanks to the Minister for her open and collaborative approach throughout its passage. She and her team have been extremely generous with their time and I am very grateful to them all. I am also grateful to all noble Lords for their patience as I have fumbled through my first involvement in amending a Bill; I have learned a lot from them. The Bill has been an excellent demonstration of the depth of expertise that resides in this House and of how well the House can work across parties to improve legislation. As the Minister said after Third Reading

“we collaborated, we talked, we listened and we made the Bill better.”—[Official Report, 15/7/20; col. 1671.]

I agree with her and, as I said earlier, I very much look forward to that same collaborative spirit continuing into the discussions on the regulations that will put the flesh on to the skeleton of this Bill.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)]

Noble Lords in the Chamber have indicated that they wish to speak. I call the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann.

[Baroness Altmann (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend the Minister on introducing this group of amendments and particularly thank her, the Bill team officials and the Pensions Regulator for engaging with us in such a collegiate manner. The co-operativeness and openness that have been shown to all noble Lords across the House have been hugely welcomed and already commented upon; I reiterate that this approach has improved the Bill and that this will continue into the future when it comes to the regulations. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham, as well as the noble Baronesses, Lady Sherlock and Lady Drake, on the way in which we have all been able to co-operate on this important issue.

I briefly express concerns about the MaPS dashboard being sidelined and the data-security issues that may be involved in the dashboard, as well as, importantly, the fairness issues that will be dealt with in regulations of CDC schemes. Having dealt with that, I turn to Motions 4A and 4C. It is important that my noble friend can provide reassurance that scheme-specific approaches that have endured so far will be preserved. As the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, has outlined—echoed by the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock—there are issues on which I am confident my noble friend will be able to reassure us.

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I believe and fervently hope that my noble friend the Minister will confirm the Government to be in agreement with the issues raised by the noble Baronesses, Lady Bowles and Lady Sherlock, and the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, about avoiding what might be called reckless conservatism or counterproductive caution, so that our £2 trillion worth of defined benefit scheme assets can feed into the rebuilding of our economy and support sustainability both of the schemes and of the environment. I once again thank my noble friend and her team for all their hard work on the Bill, and thank colleagues across the House for all the work they have done.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)]

I call the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton.

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

My Lords, I draw the attention of the House to my entry in the register of interests.

I need to ask the indulgence of the House because I accept that it is unusual for a Member who has not contributed at any previous stage of a Bill to intervene at this stage. However, I was not a Member of the House then, and so I was unable to take part. It will be recalled that the Bill was introduced almost exactly a year ago, and it is almost exactly a year ago that I was first aware that I would be joining your Lordships. I watched the entire progress of the Pensions Bill—with only slight exaggeration—like a child locked out of a sweet shop. I so much wanted to take part in the debate and discussions. I am not suggesting for one moment that the incredible work by my noble friends on the Bill has not been effective; I just would have liked to have been with them.

It is also worth mentioning, since the House places some stress on being a repository of expertise, that on Clause 123 I can claim considerable expertise because I am a fellow of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries. In the course of my actuarial work I was a scheme actuary and I produced valuations, and that is what this clause is about. Since this is the first time that I have had a chance to speak when I have not been subject to a three-minute time limit, I am tempted to speak for a long time about scheme valuations, but I will spare your Lordships that.

Before I get to the substance, I thank the Minister. As I say, I have watched the debates, and I pay tribute to the way in which the Bill has been handled. I highlight that the introduction of what I still think of as collective DC is an excellent move forward and of considerable importance, as is—although of course there is more to be done—the work that has been done on the dashboard.

Turning to the amendments, I strongly support what is proposed here. The issue is the valuation of open defined benefit pension schemes. Real concern has been expressed by employers and trade unions representing their members about such schemes that the changes foreshadowed in the regulatory regime by the legislation will not work for such schemes, and the result will be higher costs and lower benefits. I am glad to see that a response has been made on the behalf of the Pensions Regulator, assuring us that it is not saying, “Don’t worry, just trust us with it all”, and making various commitments about how open defined benefit schemes will be handled. Well, why not put such assurances into the legislation? I certainly hope they will be included in the regulations.

At this point, it is worth acquainting the House with some evidence that the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries has presented on this clause. It said:

“Any employer that has left their DB scheme open to new entrants to date is highly likely to have done so as a conscious choice, and usually with strong support from members and associated trade unions. The risks inherent in DB are typically well understood not only by the employers but also by the scheme’s members, and their trade union representatives. These schemes should therefore not necessarily be treated the same, or need the same level of security, as closed schemes. In our view it is critically important that viable and successful open schemes are not caused to close through adverse legislative change or guidance from The Pensions Regulator.”


I fully endorse what the institute says there and what has been said by previous speakers, with which I concur. What is notable about what the institute said in that statement is that it emphasises how pension schemes emerged from the employment relationship. One thing that really worries me about leaving it to the regulator is that there is not a single person on the board of the Pensions Regulator who has any experience of employment or industrial relations, or at least not significant enough for them to put it in their biographical details.

I have one final point. This debate is about open schemes, as others have mentioned. I do not want anyone to think that the situation is that there is no more debate to be had about closed schemes. The noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, mentioned the issue of closed schemes. I concur with what has been said there, and that we have to get that right as well; there is more debate to be had on that issue. It is not just about open schemes. So there will be a continuing debate, but I hope the Minister will be able to give us some reassurance about the treatment of open schemes.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)]

I call the noble Baroness, Lady Janke, whose name was left off the list inadvertently.

[Baroness Janke (LD) [V]]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Davies. No doubt we will welcome his expertise and experience into what is already a considerable group of experts and knowledgeable people in your Lordships’ House.

I support the amendment of my noble friend Lady Bowles. I pay tribute to her for the way in which she has pursued this matter with great skill and tenacity by working across the parties and seeking agreement on a way forward. There is clearly a problem for open DB schemes, as has been expressed to us already, particularly by the railway workers’ union but also by other pension funds. Clearly, as my noble friend has said, it is unrealistic and wrong for the same restraints to be imposed on open DB schemes that are not destined for closure in the immediate future as those imposed on closed schemes. As others have said, if that were to be the case, currently open DB schemes not on the path to maturity would suffer and may close as a result, with dire effects for their membership and a considerable impact on the wider economy.

I very much welcome the Minister’s opening statement, in which she indicated her willingness to ensure that open schemes not on the path to maturity should not be prevented from making more beneficial investments. I hope the five points clearly outlined by my noble friend Lady Bowles will form the basis of the future operation of these healthy open schemes, as the noble Lord, Lord Davies, referred to.

I too record my thanks to all those who have contributed to the Bill, such as the ministerial team, who have provided information and expert advice, and noble Lords who have demonstrated their knowledge, experience and expertise in considering the Bill. They have shown how this House has not only provided scrutiny and challenge but enabled improvements to the legislation and benefits to those who will depend on this in future.

I thank the Minister and her colleague in the other place for their willingness to keep an open mind and not only to listen but to take on board suggestions and use their best endeavours to address the issues raised by Members. I also thank all the teams supporting Members, particularly Sarah Pughe in the Lib Dem office, who has provided us with marvellous support. I very much look forward to the Minister’s response and hope that it will reassure my colleague that she is able to let this matter move forward and that her concerns will be listened to and acted upon.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)]

Does anyone else in the Chamber wish to speak? I think probably not.

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

My Lords, I will first respond to the question of my noble friend Lady Altmann on long-term horizons. The scheme funding measures in the Bill, together with secondary legislation and a revised scheme funding code of practice, seek to support trustees and employers to manage this scheme funding with a focus on longer term planning. As now, the scheme’s liquidity requirements, investment timelines and the amount of risk each scheme can support will depend on factors including its maturity and the strength of its employer covenant. Trustees can and do invest in illiquid assets such as infrastructure, and our measures do not seek to discourage such investments where they are appropriate.

I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Davies, for his contribution. The thought of being locked out of a sweet shop gives me more heartache than your Lordships will know. We will do our very best to make sure that it does not happen again. We welcome the noble Lord to the House and have no doubt that he will add a lot of expertise. He has joined the formidable band of brothers on pensions and we are very glad he is with us.

I am very grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Bowles and Lady Sherlock, for their amendments. I am also grateful to all those who have contributed to the debates we had relating to schemes that are open to new members. They have been highly influential and have helped us refine our thinking on how schemes in these circumstances should be treated. The Government are very sympathetic to the thinking behind these amendments, but there are good reasons why we do not want to deal with these matters on the face of the Bill.

One of the main drivers behind our reforms to the scheme funding arrangement is the desire to be able to more effectively tackle the small minority of schemes and employers who push the flexibilities of our scheme-specific arrangements further than is appropriate, to the detriment of their members. As the detail of the arrangements is necessarily complex, there is a real risk that attempting to deal with it in primary legislation will inadvertently weaken the funding regime as a whole and undermine the ability of the Pensions Regulator to tackle the very issues that these reforms were designed to address. Rather, we think that the best place to deal with these matters is in regulations—following a full consultation. That way, we can work closely with the full range of interested parties, effectively calibrate the system and get the right balance between member security and employer affordability. By placing such matters in regulations, we will retain the flexibility in the future to adjust the relevant parameters should the evolving economic situation demand it.

What I can do now is set out some key principles of how we will proceed with framing the secondary legislation, which I am happy to put on the record and am confident will provide noble Lords with the reassurance they are looking for. Much of our original thinking was driven by the fact that most schemes are closed and maturing, but we completely accept that we need to be clearer about our thinking on other important groups of schemes. These are the schemes that continue to admit new members. Many of these schemes will not be maturing in the same way as closed schemes and some of them will be admitting sufficient new members to avoid maturing at all. A genuinely scheme-specific approach has to recognise the characteristics of such schemes and treat them appropriately. I am therefore grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, and others for helping us to focus our thinking on these schemes. Let me make it clear now that the Government, having further considered the debate on the Bill and feedback from the pensions industry, fully intend that the defined benefit funding regime will remain scheme specific, and any bespoke approach should build on this foundation. This regime will continue to apply flexibility to take account of individual scheme circumstances.

The department confirms that detailed provisions for ongoing defined benefit funding, including any necessary assessment criteria and metrics, will be set out in regulations and in the Pension Regulator’s defined benefit funding code of practice, which will acknowledge the position of open and less mature schemes. As noble Lords have said, Ministers at the DWP have gone to great lengths to make themselves available to those who have pressed them on the position of schemes that remain open to new members. Both Ministers and officials have had extensive discussions with interested Peers, and others, including on schemes that remain open to new members. I also understand that interested Peers have been able to discuss these matters in detail with senior officials at the Pensions Regulator. This has been a highly productive engagement and, as I have said, it has been instrumental in guiding us to a better and more refined policy position. That is something I expect to continue.

Prior to the publication of the draft regulations, the Government can commit to an engagement programme with interested parties, including a range of schemes. These will include those remaining open and immature. They will launch a consultation document informed by this engagement. The Government will also publish a regulatory impact assessment of the draft regulations and the Pensions Regulator will publish an impact assessment alongside its revised funding code. These will include analyses of different de-risking approaches on members and sponsors of all schemes, including those that are open or immature, and those that are not targeting buyout.

We absolutely do not want to see good and viable defined benefit schemes close unnecessarily. We want them to be treated on their merits in a truly scheme-specific regime. We have said that open schemes should be able to provide the same level of security for members as closed schemes. I want to make it absolutely clear that this does not mean that they necessarily need to invest in the same way. We simply mean that members in an open scheme should be able to enjoy the same level of confidence that the benefits they have worked hard to build up will be paid in full, as for members in a closed scheme. We completely agree that open schemes that are not maturing and have a strong employer covenant should not be forced into an inappropriate de-risking journey. We will ensure that such schemes and employers which can support a higher risk and higher expected reward investment strategy can continue to invest in this way. If they are already doing the right thing, they should not need to significantly increase contributions as a result of these new measures.

The Government accept that for some schemes, depending on the circumstances, de-risking is not the best way to safeguard members’ benefits. Member benefits can be best safeguarded by an appropriate integrated risk management strategy determined after careful analysis by the trustees, which takes account of time horizon, liquidity, employer covenant and appropriate diversification.

This is the way that we intend to proceed as, with the help of close engagement with interested parties, we work on the regulations that will set out the detail of how the funding regime will operate. I hope that what I have said reassures noble Lords of our intentions and that the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)]

My Lords, I have not received any requests to speak after the Minister, so I now call the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles of Berkhamsted, to reply.

[Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I am not normally a speaker on DWP matters—I am usually in the business and Treasury box—but, after a first foray on this Bill, or into this sweet shop, as the noble Lord, Lord Davies, would put it, maybe I should come again.

I thank all those who have spoken in this debate. The issues have already been explained and the Minister in reply has given the reassurances that were sought. Before I formally withdraw the amendment, I thank the Minister for the way in which these proceedings have been conducted, for her geniality and openness and, similarly, thank the officials from the department and the Pensions Regulator, and everyone for tolerating me.

As has been said, the issues are complex and interlinked. I am grateful to hear the Minister say that the debate around this has been influential and has refined thinking. I acknowledge that some employers will abuse the system and, because of its complexity, I accept that the Government do not want to put words into the Bill that are hard to change and which might give rise to unintended consequences. Of course, I would have preferred to see a little something there, but I understand the reasoning. I accept that there will be good consultation around the regulations and that all of us are looking for the same results.

I thank again noble Lords who have spoken today and supported me in my previous endeavours and all those who gave their expertise in earlier stages of the Bill. I am pleased that we are joined by the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, and think that we will benefit from his presence greatly in future. Others who have also assisted include my noble friend Lord Sharkey from these Benches, as well as the noble Baronesses, Lady Drake and Lady Young. I also thank the various pension schemes that have been generous with their time and information, so we were able to look at the sort of spread of assets and risks that they were talking about and did not come to this debate without a good basis of information; we knew that our arguments were supported.

It has been a good co-operative effort. I doubt that it is the end of the story, as there will be more consultations and things to watch. I hope and expect that the engagement with noble Lords by the Minister and the department and our co-operation with one another will continue. For now, I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.