Superannuation Bill

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in sending our best wishes to the noble Baroness, Lady Turner of Camden. I served on a committee with her when I first became a Member of this House and have been very fond of her ever since. We look forward to having her back with us. She played a useful and constructive role in our Grand Committee discussions. In Grand Committee we discussed the question of the balance of pay with trade unionists and I remarked at the time that we need to understand how many low-paid civil servants there are and to construct a scheme which is as fair as possible to the lower-paid. As the noble Baroness will know, one of the elements of this scheme is that all those earning under £23,000 who are offered redundancy will be treated as if they were earning £23,000. So built into the compensation scheme are limitations for the small number of civil servants who are paid £150,000 or above and much greater benefits for that large number of civil servants who earn below the medium wage. I hope that this has the sympathy of all Members of the House because it is part of what this scheme is intended to achieve. Although this amendment seeks to amend Clause 3, to some extent it contradicts Clause 1, as the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, pointed out. The Government are not therefore able to accept it as it is not entirely clear what its implications would be. As I have already made clear, the Government are committed to full consultation with the Civil Service trade unions over the long term. However, the recent history of changes proposed to the Civil Service Compensation Scheme both by the previous Government and by the coalition Government shows that a requirement to reach agreement can lead to stalemate where the Government of the day are unable to implement the changes that are necessary or agreed with the majority of unions. So in practice the drafting of the amendment may not have the effect that the noble Baroness, Lady Turner of Camden, would want it to achieve. It does not just apply to changes in the compensation scheme but rather to the scheme as a whole. I am sure I do not need to tell noble Lords that the Government would not want this to be the case. Nevertheless, I appreciate the opportunity that the noble Baroness’s amendment provides to emphasise yet again our commitment to meaningful consultation and our determination on the other hand not to allow any union to have a complete veto over changes that may be proposed to the Civil Service Compensation Scheme. This is an important point which we take as seriously as the noble Baroness does and we are determined that it is the lower paid civil servants who will have the most generous benefits, as we have proposed in the current scheme. We have therefore pushed this scheme forward and are puzzled by the resistance of one of the unions to a scheme that seems to us to be better for the lower-paid than the alternatives that that union seems to prefer. I turn to the drafting of the amendment. On several occasions in Grand Committee I heard the noble Baroness express genuine concern for civil servants who are at risk of redundancy. Many of us, me included, have received many letters from civil servants. There are also a good many low-paid HMRC civil servants where I live in Yorkshire, so I not only receive letters but hear about it from people in the pub. I am therefore entirely sure that it is not the noble Baroness’s intention that the amendment should jeopardise any compensation payments to civil servants in that position. As drafted, however, Amendment 5 does not achieve what she seeks to do—even if the Government were minded to support it, which we are not. Once the Bill receives Royal Assent, it is our intention to lay before Parliament the revised Civil Service Compensation Scheme which, in our view, will be fair to civil servants and affordable for the taxpayer. I hope that I have provided sufficient clarification about the intention of the coalition Government’s policy and the legislation to deliver it, and that I have explained my concerns about the effect of this amendment. I therefore ask the noble Baroness to withdraw it.