Pensions Bill

moved Amendment No. 96: 96: Clause 40, page 19, line 34, leave out from ““indictment”” to ““to”” in line 35 The noble Baroness said: In moving Amendment No. 96, which seeks to amend Clause 40(2), I shall also speak to Amendment No. 97, which complements it. Since I tabled my probing amendments, the Government have tabled Amendments Nos. 97A to 97C, which take a diametrically opposite view to my amendments and therefore answer my probing questions to some extent, although not in the way that I had originally hoped. Clause 40 deals with various offences in relation to enrolment and opting in and subsection (2) provides for the penalties on conviction. On a summary conviction, there are fines. On a conviction on indictment, there is the possibility of imprisonment for up to two years, a fine or both. My amendment would remove the option of imprisonment for a conviction on indictment. I tabled this because these are offences committed by employers. For the most part employers will be corporate bodies and companies cannot be locked up, but a minority of employers will be individuals, whether sole traders or partnerships. These are typically small businesses and the individuals clearly could be locked up. My purpose in tabling my amendments was to ask what public policy objective was served by having the possibility of imprisoning employers only if they happened to operate in an unincorporated form, as this seemed to target small and unincorporated businesses. The government amendments, which I shall leave the Minister to explain in his own way, go a different route and bring company directors and others fully within the criminal provisions, including those related to imprisonment. We know that the Government think that the business world is populated by unscrupulous businesses, which are in turn manned by unprincipled directors and managers. Hence, they are accustomed to take the most draconian powers possible. Since this Government came to power, they have progressively introduced legislation, broadly in the format of Amendment No. 97B, which allows them to lock up directors and others even on the basis of mere neglect—not gross negligence or recklessness, only simple neglect. I therefore have a couple of sets of questions for the Minister about this form of offence. Will he say how often similar provisions—in other words, those based on neglect—have been used against directors in the past 10 years? How many directors have been imprisoned? The Minister’s own department, for example, has introduced identical provisions for health and safety offences. Have they resulted in convictions followed by imprisonment? Secondly, will the Minister place on record the Government’s understanding, in the context of the offences created by the Bill and his amendments, of the sorts of actions and omissions that will be likely to bring the new provisions into effect? What sort of conduct will amount to connivance? What will amount to neglect? Will neglect encompass a simple mistake? I beg to move.