Pensions Bill

moved, as an amendment to Amendment No. 78B, Amendment No. 78X: 78X: Before Schedule 9, line 174, at end insert— ““(12A) No such contribution notice shall be issued to an individual.”” The noble Lord said: My Lords, I shall speak also to the other amendments in this group. They pick up on four small and rather separate points, and I shall not take too long about them. The first amendment emphasises how dangerous it will be if it becomes felt that the regulator will stray beyond the code into other matters. That would raise fears among individuals engaged in what appears to them to be ordinary day-to-day transactions with a peripheral possibility of an influence on the pension fund. They will for their own good reasons want clearance. For instance, directors involved in declaring a dividend might well feel that they have to get clearance for it if the company is in any danger of not being able to pay contributions to the pension fund at some time in the future. I hope that the Minister will give me comfort that he does not see that as a possibility. The amendment points up the provisions that we would need to put in place if that came about; otherwise we would find the regulator swamped with applications. The second amendment looks at the way in which the statutory duty of a director of a company to, "““act in the way he considers, in good faith, would be most likely to promote the success of the company for the benefit of its members as a whole””," works with the obligations under the Bill. The amendment states that a contribution notice could not be issued in circumstances where a director had acted as the Companies Act requires him to act. I shall be interested in how the Minister enlarges on what he said before on the way in which the Companies Act and the Bill will work together in the obligations they place on directors. The third amendment looks at protecting professionals who come in to sort out a company in a difficult situation. If a pension fund is involved, it is necessarily a pretty hairy area and one where decisions have to be taken fast on a relatively rough-and-ready basis. Although there are people operating in that sort of business who are doing so in the hope of making millions of pounds for themselves, most of the people involved are just there for a crust. If they have been successful over the years, they may well have put enough by to have a nice home and something that it might be thought worth the regulator going after. I do not think it is the Government’s intention that people who are doing the best job they can to try to rescue a company should find all their assets, which have nothing to do with the company, gone after, particularly if they have to go back to the old wording ““acted in good faith””. Professionals remain worried that trying to rescue a company with a defined benefit pension fund could turn out to be personally dangerous. I hope we will get some comfort from the Minister on that. The last point concerns new subsections (6) and (7), under which the regulator can issue directions to the trustees or managers of a scheme, requiring that money coming in is used in a particular way. Trustees owe fiduciary duties to their members in any event. They would have every incentive, without further legislation, to ensure that payment is applied in a way that best meets those objectives. I cannot see that new subsections (6) and (7) add anything useful except the possibility of inappropriate inflexibility. I beg to move.