My Lords, these amendments make a number of minor and technical amendments to the Bill. Amendments 7 and 8 amend new Section 142W, which gives the Treasury the power to require that ring-fenced banks make arrangements to ensure that
they cannot become liable for the pension liabilities of any non-ring-fenced entity, and that they minimise such potential liabilities if they cannot entirely prevent them arising. In the process of making these arrangements, the pension scheme trustees may wish to transfer assets or liabilities between schemes. These amendments clarify that the Treasury can make regulations enabling trustees or managers to transfer to another pension scheme all the pension liabilities arising in connection with persons’ service before the date on which ring-fencing comes into effect, together with all the scheme’s assets and not just part of those liabilities and assets.
The Government’s intention is to give banks and trustees flexibility in how they carry out any segregation or separation of pension schemes. If trustees judge that transferring all such liabilities or assets is in the best interests of scheme members, the legislation should not prevent that. The trustees have a duty to act in the best interests of scheme members throughout any restructuring that takes place to comply with ring-fencing. As an added safeguard, we are taking the power under the Bill to require the banks by regulation to do all they can to get clearance from the pensions regulator for their scheme restructuring.
Amendment 9 is a minor and technical amendment which clarifies the definition of a qualifying parent undertaking for the purposes of Part 9B of FiSMA, which deals with ring-fencing. A qualifying parent undertaking is defined in proposed new Section 142L(4), and this amendment ensures that this definition will apply wherever the term is used in Part 9B.
Amendment 173 is a minor and technical amendment which clarifies that the definition of regulator in Section 3A does not apply for the purposes of Sections 410A and 410B, which deal with the Treasury’s power to impose fees on the financial services industry to cover the costs of UK participation in certain international organisations. The amendment ensures that the definition of regulator that applies to these sections includes the Bank of England, rather than the definition given in Section 3A of FiSMA, which is limited to the FCA and the PRA.