Pensions Bill

In making my first intervention on this Bill, I declare an interest as one of those who was affected by the errors described by my noble friend. I emphasise, too, that the present chairman of the parliamentary pension fund has made strenuous efforts in recent times to improve the management arrangements. It was extraordinary that the Fees Office had no professional expertise, that the advice received from both the National Insurance Contributions Office and HMRC was wrong and that the errors were not spotted by the Government Actuary or the National Audit Office. One of the consequences is that the 177 pensioners who were overpaid and the 100 who were underpaid have probably been dealt with less generously than they would have been in a private pension scheme. I feel pretty sure that, in the days when I was a trustee of private pension schemes, with an error of this kind, whose net cost was not substantial after taking account of tax implications and so on and which had occurred because of the lack of professional expertise provided by the employer and the actuary not having done his job properly, most employers would have covered the costs rather than expecting pensioners to repay overpayments at a time that was extremely painful for them to do so. I need not go further on those matters, except to take up some of the lessons that I think were learnt from what happened after the errors had been discovered. The trouble was that there was no representative group of pensioners to whom advice could be sought or with whom consultations could take place. There were consultations involving the Leader of the House of Commons and an effort was made to bring in the Association of Former Members of Parliament. However, the association was set up relatively recently, after these errors occurred, and I have to confess that I did not know of its existence. It certainly has no specific pension role and cannot be taken to be representative of pensioners. When I was last a pension trustee in a firm of which I was a director, we had elected pension trustees and we made a point of having an annual meeting to which pensioners could come to cross-examine the trustees and to receive advice about the way in which their pension fund was being managed, the investments were being made and so on. There was always a good attendance at those meetings. When this episode occurred, no such meeting was convened. I first heard about it when I received a letter saying that my pension would be reduced the following month and that I would be asked to repay a quite substantial sum over the next five years. There were no detailed discussions to explain what had gone on. We then had to seek advice. I sought advice from, among others, the Pensions Advisory Service; my noble friend has read out from the advice the normal way of dealing with these things in private schemes. It is entirely wrong that the parliamentary scheme should be living in the dark ages of pensions representation and administration in this way. It should set an example and give a lead; it should not have to defend the indefensible. Surely pensioners receiving benefits from the parliamentary pension scheme are entitled to be fully and adequately represented by people whom they have helped to choose. They should have the opportunity to nominate and, preferably, to vote on those people; they should not simply be represented by people who, however honourable and whatever efforts they may put into their work, are not chosen representatives. I warmly welcome the proposals made by my noble friend to bring the parliamentary pension scheme into the modern age. They would make sure that the scheme is properly run and that the representatives of the pensioners are chosen in the way that is considered appropriate for all other pension schemes today. Anything else is indefensible. If the Minister has to say that there is a fault in the detailed proposals that my noble friend has put forward, I hope that he will come up with a solution that offers the members of the parliamentary pension scheme the kind of representation that they should have and which they probably could have if they were members of any other scheme operating under normal rules.