Occupational Pension Schemes (Contracting-out) (Amendment) Regulations 2009

We have now turned our attention to guaranteed minimum pensions and I, for one, am grateful to the Minister for his attempt to steer us through what this most complicated order is doing. The noble Lord called it complex. If I had a deeper word in my vocabulary to express complexity, I would most certainly use it. I say "complicated" because, although Section 14 of the Pensions Act 2007 is crystal clear in its intent and is referred to in the Explanatory Memorandum, nowhere could I find a reference to it in the order itself. I would not expect it to be in the main guts of the order, but I would expect to find it in a footnote. Footnote (a) on the front page of the order states: ""1993 c.48. Sections 24B and 24C were inserted by section 14(3) of the Pensions Act 2007"." I did not find that terribly helpful. I therefore had to mount a paper chase to discover that Section 14 actually amends Sections 13 and 17 of the Pension Schemes Act 1993. I hope that I have understood the order correctly, not being nearly so expert in the field of guaranteed minimum pensions as my noble friend Lady Noakes. Its background, though, is, I think, fairly clear. As the Minister has said, between April 1978 and April 1997 defined-benefit schemes and, I believe, members of the schemes themselves—I stand to be corrected on that—could, and often did, contract out of the second state pension in its various guises. Why we have to have different names for essentially the same thing defies me, but I shall let that pass. The point is that the schemes themselves had to be as good as, or better than, the state scheme, and provide what came to be known as the guaranteed minimum pension. How many schemes have contracted out, and how many have already converted? As I read the situation, it has taken until now for the Government, through the Pensions Act 2007, to come up with a way to mitigate the fact that schemes have to continue to administer the rights already accrued, even though they ceased accruing as long ago as April 1997. Not only that, but many scheme benefits have already been converted. I have assumed, therefore, that this order is required to convert the rest. However, I am confused by paragraph 8.2 of the Explanatory Memorandum, which ends by stating that schemes would be unlikely to convert "in the near future". Presumably, that means that more schemes would be unlikely to convert in the near future. I hope that the Minister will be able to tell me the reason for this, as I would have thought that most of the conversion would have been done already, at least in those schemes that have already contracted out. This order might have been in operation had Section 14 of the 2007 Act been in the Child Support, Pensions and Social Security Act 2000 instead. Given that, I would be grateful if the Minister would explain the timing of what this order does. In essence my question is, why now? Why has it taken so long to achieve this? One usually gets to penetrate the opacity of Department for Work and Pensions orders. However, new Section 69B is more than opaque; I suggest that it is the darkest night just before the dawn. Can the Minister—as the noble Lord, Lord Richard, requested at Question Time—explain in English the two parts of new Section 69B as none of my advisers could translate it to my satisfaction? Unusually, we received no comment on this from the Merits Committee. Therefore, I would be grateful if the Minister could provide me with an answer to that.