Pensions Bill

I strongly agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, has just said. I speak to Amendment No. 142 but it is very similar in intent to Amendment No. 140. I want to take up one point that the noble Lord made: the Government should understand that it is entirely in their interests that they do this. It is not just in the interests of the public but very much in the interests of the Government—and I say to my own Front Bench, any Government—to support this kind of amendment. There are three models of a pensions commission in the showroom at present and a fourth has been driven up by the National Association of Pension Funds, which, in principle, supports the proposal that we are putting forward. There is the model of the noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott, which he spoke about briefly but which, frankly, is a bit of an old banger in that it self-evidently has some parts missing. That is because, so far as I can see, the noble Lord believes in building several models rather than just one and the result is that the vehicle is not complete. Then there are the two models suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, and me. I say without fear of serious contradiction that these are much superior in that both have engines, which is normally regarded as important in car building, and allow the commission to look at all the issues regarding pensions. Frankly, I do not mind which of the amendments is taken and accepted by the Government—which I know they will. I joke, of course, as I know that they will not. We have both self-evidently gone to the Turner report for our inspiration. I should point out that the National Association of Pension Funds, which has come out in favour of our proposals, has supported my proposal for triennial reviews, so perhaps I get my nose ahead a wee bit on that. As the Turner report makes clear, there are important reasons for keeping this area under independent review. It is on that point that I am very serious. I have two reasons for that. First, many of the errors surrounding pensions legislation occur not because the legislation has not been reviewed as it goes through Parliament. Often it has been reviewed very thoroughly indeed; committees have done their work and Ministers have given their undertakings. The fact is that that work and those undertakings have simply not been observed. That is the fact of the matter. I remember a case of my own, to which the noble Lord referred in passing, when my Minister of State—not unknown—one John Major, gave the clearest undertaking that publicity would be given to a particular change. No publicity was given. We had long since left the department at that time. I went back to see the Permanent Secretary of what was then the Department of Social Security, whose first words were, ““The fault is entirely down to this department and the Civil Service””. As it happened, Ministers, as is their right, took responsibility, but the position was that no papers ever went to the Ministers involved. The fault lay with a number of civil servants who had been charged to put the policy into effect and had not done so. Errors occur among Ministers and civil servants, so how can that be avoided? It is not too difficult, I would suggest. You have post-legislative scrutiny and a process by which somebody goes through the legislation not to agree or disagree with it, but simply to check that its intention has been and is being put into effect. If you did that, you would avoid a number of mistakes that have been made over the past 10,20 or 30 years. Secondly, this is perhaps the most cost-effective measure in this legislation. It would avoid mistakes that could cost literally millions of pounds to put right. This Government know all about that; my Government—if I can put it that way—know all about it as well. I cannot imagine that anyone would be foolish enough to argue that this will cost too much. It would be one of the best investments that the Government have made as it would prevent loss of money and errors taking occurring. In addition to what I would describe as post-legislative scrutiny, the commission has other important duties such as looking at the latest trends in private pension spending and considering the affordability of public sector pensions. That is why I think it is so important to the noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott, that one somehow finds a means whereby one can put under the same umbrella the numberof very important issues that need to be kept under review in pensions. It would be a mistake if we were simply to include one of those issues, and we would not carry the House. However, if we were to include a number of them, there would be more prospect of doing so. In addition, the ability to examine the issues that are considered urgent, which is paragraph (e) in my amendment, would certainly include the progress of legislation that has recently been past. It is 9.30 pm on Monday evening, and this is not the most overcrowded House I have seen. It is probably inappropriate to have a vote at this stage, but I sincerely say to the Minister that this is one of the most important amendments in this process. He has his instructions, and, doubtless, they will be given to us, but I say to him, for repetition to whoever gives him his instructions, that if the Government reject this, they will live to regret it. That is certain. The Government would be extraordinarily unwise to reject a sensible proposal that will not cost a vast amount of money but will preserve the interests of the present Government and any other Government who come after them.