Pensions Bill

moved Amendment No. 15: 15: After Clause 10, insert the following new Clause— ““Protection for employers (1) An employer shall not be required to give advice to jobholders or workers, either generally or on an individual basis, in respect of their rights under this Chapter. (2) An employer who provides information in compliance with any regulations issued under section 10 shall not incur any liability to any jobholder or worker to whom the information is given.”” The noble Baroness said: My Lords, the amendment adds a new clause after Clause 10. Its main purpose is to make it clear that employers have no responsibility to provide advice to their employees. We are clear that some, if not all, employees will need to take advice as to whether they accept auto-enrolment into an employer’s scheme or into personal accounts. We had some discussions in Committee about who should be responsible for the provision of that advice. The CBI, among others, has been clear that employers should not be responsible for advice. The Minister confirmed in Committee that employers would not be required to give advice. Subsection (1) merely places that confirmation in the Bill. My amendment has another purpose. It relates to Clause 10, which gives the Secretary of State power to make regulations about giving information to jobholders. In Committee the Minister made it clear that the Government may well require employers to give information. Provided that the requirements are not onerous, I am sure that most employers would not object to providing information to their employees. However, employers will want to be clear that they could not incur any liability by complying with information regulations. Subsection (2) of my amendment is designed to give employers who comply with Clause 10 regulations a safe harbour from any liability in respect of that information. When we debated this amendment in Committee, the Minister said that it was, "““difficult to envisage how an employer could be held liable””," and that, "““holding an employer liable is particularly unlikely””.—[Official Report, 17/6/08; col. 1007.]" That is, the Minister did not give an absolute assurance that compliance with the regulations would, in all cases, hold the employer harmless, and I believe that employers are entitled to that protection. In Committee, the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, supported this amendment but suggested that the concept of good faith might be usefully incorporated. I have thought carefully about that but I do not believe that it is the right addition to the amendment. An employer must comply with Clause 10 regulations and I cannot see that the state of mind of the employer in complying with the regulations would in any case be relevant. A ““good faith”” defence might need to be available if an employer decided not to comply with the regulations because he thought that it would be positively harmful to his employees but it is not a necessary addition to simply complying with the regulations. That is why I did not insert ““good faith”” into the amendment. It is about protecting employers from the possibly unintended consequences of compliance with legal obligations under Clause 10. In Committee, I did not detect a massive difference of opinion between these Benches and those opposite except as to whether something needed to be put into the Bill. I invite the Government to reconsider their position on that and to give some welcome reassurance, preferably in the Bill, to the employer community, on whose shoulders the burden of implementation will fall. I beg to move.