Pensions Bill

I am grateful to all Members of the Committee who have spoken in this debate. Many of your Lordships, in particular the Minister, the noble Lords, Lord Oakeshott and Lord Howarth, have spoken of the dire straits for the 125,000 pensioners who, to quote the Minister, "““through no fault of their own””," have seen their pension savings disappear. That is why the FAS was set up. The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, reminded us of this, but I should remind her that we are where we are now—not then. This Government have had to be pushed every time and every inch of the way on improving the FAS. This group of amendments amounts to another improvement, which is quite a large improvement none the less. However, for the vast majority of these pensioners the money is too little, too late. It is too little because of the amount of the ““core pension””, as we have heard it described many times in this debate, and too late because, unlike the PPF, it is paid only from the state retirement age of 65. Some of these pensioners will die before the money comes through. Others are sick and disabled. The inadequacies of the FAS have been well aired in this debate, which is exactly why we put down these amendments. I was criticised by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, for resorting to government spending. I remind your Lordships that this money will be repaid well before the government spending review period. Two main arguments have been put up against these amendments, not least by my noble friend Lady O’Cathain. Yes, the knife from behind is usually the sharpest, as the Minister will know. But I would remind my noble friend that the White Paper says that 75 per cent of private sector employees have no pension scheme. Therefore, it cannot be a condition of employment. The first charge that has been levied is that the lifeboat scheme is robbing Peter to pay Paul. There are no Peters. The unclaimed assets that we are saying should be used do not come from mutual funds. They come from non-trust schemes. If anyone subsequently appears to claim the money that has gone into the scheme, they will have it repaid. So I say again, there are no Peters. The second charge is that there is no money anyway, which is not so, as I said earlier.The Unclaimed Assets Register to which insurance firms and large pension firms belong has identified £15.3 billion of such assets, £3 billion of which are attributable to pension funds. The noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, very properly declared his interest in Prudential plc. I note that that firm is a member of the Unclaimed Assets Register, so I found some of his remarks curious, to say the least. Lastly, the Government intend to extend the FAS to those people who have lost their pension because their scheme was underfunded and whose employer was still solvent but no compromise agreement was reached. They will do this by order after this Bill is passed, but not until the end of the year. Amendment No. 69 does this now because now is when the lifeboat fund is needed for these impecunious pensioners. I wish to test the opinion of the Committee. On Question, Whether the said amendment(No. 68) shall be agreed to? Their Lordships divided: Contents, 181; Not-Contents, 126.