Pension Schemes Bill [HL]

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

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

There is much in the Bill, and particularly in the government amendments which my noble friend has so eloquently spoken to today, that I support. My main concern is to ensure that the issue of women entering the pensions market is addressed in the Bill and in the enabling regulations.

[Lord Blencathra (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I will speak to this group and pass observations briefly on other issues raised by the Delegated Powers Committee that are covered by other amendments, so that I do not have to speak again and take up the time of the House.

I begin by saying how nice it is to see my noble friend and roommate Lord Naseby back in the Chamber. I also see that we share the same non-barber. In contradiction to the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, I want pensioners, not youngsters, on my pension board.

As chair of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, I give a very warm welcome to these concessions from the Government in Clauses 11 to 17 and Clause 25. As noble Lords will know, our report was highly critical of a number of delegated powers in the Bill, and it would be churlish of me not to acknowledge that the Government, and particularly my noble friend the Minister, have listened to quite a bit of what we recommended. I am sure that the whole committee would be delighted if the Minister would go one step further and accept our remaining recommendations, but that might be a bridge too far for her.

The government amendments to Clauses 11 to 17 now mean that all regulations, and not just the first ones, made under the provisions will have to be affirmative. We said in our report that the Government had failed to justify the first-time affirmative regime. We accept that there will be measures where the first regulation is major and should be affirmative and that subsequent ones might be just little tweaks where the negative procedure might be appropriate. However, that is not always the case, and we see a growing tendency among government departments, in addition to bunging highly inappropriate Henry VIII clauses into every Bill, to use this ploy of applying the first-time affirmative procedure and then the negative procedure for all subsequent regulations. The subsequent regulations here could be as important as the first regulation and I thank the Minister for making the change. The same reasoning applies to Clause 124, and I regret that the Government will not make that affirmative too.

We all accept that speed is often essential, but there is an alternative to the negative procedure which is just as speedy: the made affirmative procedure, whereby the Government lay the regulation, it comes into force immediately and then Parliament has 40 days to confirm it. That is a far better procedure than the Opposition having to put down a Motion against a negative resolution. This procedure would deal also with the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, on the negative procedure. I pay tribute to my illustrious predecessor, my noble friend Lady Fookes, as chair of the Delegated Powers Committee. Today, she made very telling points on the made affirmative procedure and first-time affirmatives.

I welcome the government amendment to Clause 25 too. We generally deplore Henry VIII powers, and for very good reasons: they deprive Parliament of the opportunity to scrutinise properly legislation that should go through all the procedures applied to Bills and Acts of Parliament. It is quite wrong to use the negative procedure, where there is no discussion whatsoever, for Henry VIII powers. At least with the affirmative procedure there is 90 minutes of debate.

As for the government amendment to Clause 47, we said:

“The fact that the Government have not yet worked out how multiple-employer collective money purchase schemes should be regulated has led to very wide powers being conferred by clause 47(3) to (5). Subsection (3) confers a power on the Secretary of State to make further provision in regulations about multiple-employer collective money purchase schemes. Although specific things are mentioned in subsection (3) as to what the powers may be used for. These are not exhaustive of the things which may be dealt in the regulations.”


We therefore recommended that the delegation of powers was inappropriate.

My noble friend the Minister’s amendment goes some way to flesh out the details of the plans, but we are still concerned that they give extensive powers to the Secretary of State. I was going to award the department and my noble friend eight out of 10, but in view of her generosity of spirit, graciousness and courtesy today, I will upgrade that to nine out of 10. While I would have liked all our recommendations to have been accepted, I congratulate the department and my noble friend for moving on so many of them when other Ministers and departments have obstinately refused to budge on anything.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle [V]]

I thank your Lordships’ House for allowing me to speak. I apologise for the earlier confusion. I also apologise in particular to the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, for upsetting the rhythm of his speech. I thank him and other noble Lords for providing an introduction to Amendment 33. I must pay tribute to the campaign group ShareAction, which has done a lot of work on the amendment. I know that it has informed other noble Lords about it.

I moved the amendment in Committee. In response, the Minister pointed to the consultation on the future of trusteeship, which concluded that, due to a lack of consensus on how to address the issue, it would look at setting up, and is setting up, an industry working group to look at the diversity of pension boards. While this is welcome, we need the data to inform that work. I ask the Minister to consider incorporating this into future versions of the Bill.

A further development has happened since we last debated the Bill. There has of course been a great upswelling of frustration and understandable anger, represented by the Black Lives Matters movement. The issue of ensuring that all voices in our society are heard and have decision-making powers is particularly pressing. I urge Members of your Lordships’ House to consider it.

In response to the amendment in Committee, the Minister stressed that she wanted the pensions dashboard to focus on the provision of basic information. That is why the amendment has been amended so that it does not refer to this information being on the pensions dashboard, but rather that it would simply be reported. Information on diversity could be published elsewhere. That might be on the Pensions Regulator’s website, or as an annexe to its planned SIP repository.

Other noble Lords have referred to the level of inequality in our society and the lack of diversity. I will finish by reflecting on what the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, said, and the fact that a 2016 survey showed that on average 83% of pension boards are male and that a quarter are all male. That reflects another crucial disparity: we all know that there is a very large pay gap between men and women, but the pensions pay gap, at 40%, is double the pay gap. These inequalities have to be tackled in our society along with levels of inequality and poverty. We have had a lot of discussions about intergenerational fairness, but we must not forget that there are already a lot of people at pension age now who really are struggling to get by in this difficult world.

I thank your Lordships’ House for the debate that we have had thus far and I look forward to further debates.