Public Service Pensions Bill

Debate between Stephen McPartland and Richard Fuller

Monday 22nd April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Richard Fuller]

It is customary to say what a pleasure it is to follow the previous speaker, and in this case it is a great pleasure to have listened to the contribution from the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell). He asked precise questions and reinforced some of the points made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) in order to move forward what the Minister had said earlier. Thanks to those two contributions, we are beginning to get to the real meat of the issue of how we can ensure that this group of overlooked public sector workers can find an acceptable and fair outcome to their pension situation after all these years.

Within the overall ambit of the Bill, I speak as one who sits outside the cosy compromise between Government and Opposition Members on the principles set out by Lord Hutton. Our decisions on pensions must stand the test of time. People make decisions about contributions to their pensions based on the expectation that those contributions will have an effect 20 or 30 years later when they retire. My concern about the compromise relates to affordability, given that we are asking the taxpayer to foot the bill.

I want to draw the House’s attention to the specific costs involved in the measure. I am sure that the Minister will correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that the amount involved is £10 million per annum. I am a big admirer of my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland), but he said earlier that £10 million a year was not really a considerable amount of money. I believe, however, that it is indeed a considerable amount of money to be paid year on year. Under the previous Government, it was that attitude that £10 million here and £10 million there did not really matter that led to the grotesque financial situation that we found ourselves in in 2010.

[Stephen McPartland]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Richard Fuller]

I will give way to my spendthrift Friend.

[Stephen McPartland]

The point I was making was that, although £10 million is a lot of money at a personal level, I do not feel that it should be a reason to allow such discrepancies to continue. The House should be trying to create parity between all those who do that difficult job on a daily basis, and to focus on the overall package of measures rather than just on the pensions question. That £10 million could provide savings, as the Minister suggested earlier.

[Richard Fuller]

My hon. Friend has characteristically drawn us to the centre ground. When we consider our public sector workers, we should look not at their pensions in isolation but at the broader question of the compensation terms and conditions under which they are employed.

As I have said, we are talking about a relatively small number of workers. Those members of our public services have a physically demanding job, but it is also a requirement of their public service employment that they are at times asked to put their lives at risk to maintain public safety. It behoves us to take a special approach to such workers and to the way in which their pension conditions are treated.

Education Bill

Debate between Stephen McPartland and Richard Fuller

Monday 14th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Richard Fuller]

The hon. Gentleman is, as he has been throughout this process, a source of extreme insight and has expanded my knowledge. He is absolutely right that that is the key aspect. As he knows from deliberations in Committee, all Members on both sides of the House have sought to achieve that.

To the extent that it is not the structure that matters but the education of children, the hon. Gentleman is correct. However, the Bill is not a nudge along for the structure of our educational institutions but a more substantial change. I am therefore expressing the retrospective wish that their noble Lords had been somewhat more adventurous in defining some of the new scopes for duties to co-operate in their amendments. Had they done so, the goal of focusing on the education of our children, which the hon. Gentleman and I share with other hon. Members, including the Minister, could have been moved forward a little. My current concern is that there could be turf battles about who is responsible for what in the duty to co-operate.

[Stephen McPartland]

Can my hon. Friend give us examples of the local authority paying lip service to co-operating with the school when it did not want to co-operate in practice?

[Richard Fuller]

I appreciate the incentive that my hon. Friend gives me to talk about local issues—there are examples in the borough of Bedford and more generally—but he recognises that the duty to co-operate involves questions such as the ownership of land and buildings. In addition, my local authority has a somewhat confused educational structure. There is a mix of two tier and three tier, and sometimes there is both in the same place at the same time. In those circumstances, when schools wish to pursue becoming an academy, there is potential for a difference of opinion on the best interests of children. A school being subject to a requirement to co-operate with the local authority on the basis of the local authority’s responsibilities does not facilitate the growing liberalisation of schools to determine their futures that we wish to see. There is potential for conflict, but I hope that those examples have helped my hon. Friend.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Fuller]

I do not wish to detain the House too long on this point, because we have heard many aspects of it. My hon. Friend points out that the organisations are very substantial and that some have turnovers of £250 million or more. Does not that simply point to the fact that for those organisations the reputational risk will be far greater than any penalty that could be imposed? Does not the size of those organisations support the suggestion made by the Chair of the Education Committee, rather than the proposals in their lordships’ amendments?

[Stephen McPartland]

My hon. Friend makes a fantastic point, but I must stop myself agreeing with him. I believe that the reputational risk is only a very small part of the problem with Ofqual’s relationship with awarding organisations. The problem is that Ofqual has only the nuclear option, to which the Minister referred, of saying, “You are either in or out.” I imagine that causes a great deal of conflict in Ofqual when it investigates an organisation. My hon. Friend knows from his vast business experience that the cost of doing business is often factored into every meeting, and I have no doubt that the cost of engaging with Ofqual is included in every meeting.