argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Pension Schemes Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2020-06-30
Topic: Labor
Maeve Christina Mary Sherlock (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, for returning to this issue. We all know that there are some DB schemes with significant deficits and employers who could be doing more to clear them more quickly. Let us not forget the work done by LCP, which showed many firms paying out dividends 10 to 20 times their pension deficit payments, or the regulator’s annual DB funding statement last year, which raised concern about the disparity between dividend growth and stable deficit repair contributions The problem will not disappear. As more DB schemes have closed, they will soon be paying out more in pensioner payments, leaving them less to invest and with a need to de-risk their remaining investments The Covid pandemic is going to make things worse. The Pensions Regulator reports that, so far, only around 10% of schemes have agreed a temporary suspension or a reduction in DRCs post Covid, but more trustees and employers are in the process of discussing possible requests to suspend or reduce contributions. We all know that the full force of the economic storm has yet to hit us. The noble Lord, Lord Vaux, mentioned the no-dividend rules for Covid business loans. The regulator’s Covid-19 guidance on defined benefit scheme funding and investment says that, if trustees face requests to suspend or reduce contributions, then they should seek mitigations. It gives an example, saying: "All dividends and other forms of shareholder distribution to stop throughout the period of suspension and not to start again until the deferred or suspended contributions have been paid." TPR will still require trustees to report agreements to suspend or reduce contributions and provide information on the mitigations Ministers say that the regulator can chase employers if resources are taken out that should not be taken, but we know what the danger is if action is taken only after a dividend has been paid out. If the dividends are paid out by a UK employer to an overseas parent, it can be very difficult to get them back. It is entirely possible, in these difficult times, that if a company is in trouble and its parent company is based overseas, there may well be a move to repatriate assets to the home state. These amendments seek to tackle that problem not by stopping dividends or even buybacks where there is a deficit but by making them a notifiable event in certain circumstances The noble Lord, Lord Vaux, has softened his amendments, but he has still made a compelling case. Therefore, if the Minister does not want to accept these amendments, can he tell the House how he will ensure that the next BHS or Carillion scandal will not be a company with a foreign parent seeking to repatriate assets before abandoning its obligations to the pension scheme? I look forward to his reply.
Pension Schemes Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2020-06-30
Topic: Labor
Ruth Henig (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, we now come to the group beginning with Amendment 52. I remind noble Lords that Members other than the mover and the Minister may speak only once, and that short questions of elucidation are discouraged. Anyone wishing to press this amendment, or any other amendment in the group, to a Division should make that clear in debate Clause 118: Qualifying pensions dashboard service Amendment 52
Pension Schemes Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2020-06-30
Topic: Government Operations
Maeve Christina Mary Sherlock (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, this has been another interesting debate. Before I address the question of the dashboard, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Young, who has been deploying his considerable stores of intellect and wit as he has politely but determinedly pursued Ministers on the matter of verifying and identity verification. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to him yet again I am delighted that Ministers have now agreed to ensure that there will be a public dashboard and that it will be available from launch. I welcome the government amendments in this group, but Amendment 63, in my name and that my noble friend Lady Drake and others, aims to push the Government an extra step further: to put in place an essential safeguard that the MaPS public dashboard must have been in operation for a year, and the Secretary of State have laid a report before Parliament on the operation and effectiveness of the service, before commercial dashboards are authorised by the FCA to enter the market I am sorry to hear that the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, regards this amendment as inappropriate, and that she somehow seems to think that people were using the Bill as an opportunity to bring in other things. The only reason that we have had to table amendments to place safeguards is because the Government have brought forward proposals without adequate safeguards in the first place. I have certainly never voted while on a garden bench and I have more confidence that my fellow Members of the House of Lords are listening to the arguments and able to make an intelligent judgment. I hope that they will feel able to support us on this amendment, as they did on the last I am, however, grateful for the support of the noble Lords, Lord Vaux and Lord Sharkey, the noble Baronesses, Lady Altmann and Lady Janke, and the kind words of the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham. The case for this amendment has been made overwhelmingly by my noble friend Lady Drake and other speakers, so I will not rehearse it in detail, but I was struck by her summary of the many complexities and challenges still to be dealt with in the dashboard project. These are building the architecture, sorting out the liability model, deciding how to compensate consumers for a detriment, managing data standards and data-sharing risks, identity verification and security, and behavioural responses. Basically, there is a lot yet to be decided, designed, operationalised and tested. The Government’s plan is to do all this with a public dashboard and commercial dashboards running alongside each other from the launch. It is our contention that that simply unnecessarily increases the risk.
Pension Schemes Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2020-06-30
Topic: Social Welfare
Ruth Henig (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, we now come to the group consisting of Amendment 71. I remind noble Lords that Members other than the mover and the Minister may speak only once and that short questions of elucidation are discouraged. Anyone wishing press this amendment to a Division should make that clear in debate Clause 123: Funding of defined benefit schemes Amendment 71
Pension Schemes Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2020-06-30
Topic: Labor
Jean Lesley Patricia Drake (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 71. Given the hour, the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles of Berkhamsted, with her usual skill, has captured the issues clearly and succinctly. It is clear that there is genuine concern among those running DB schemes which are materially open to new members with strong employers, such as the sections of the Railways Pension Scheme and the Universities Superannuation Scheme. They fear that they will be forced to de-risk unnecessarily, with all the implications that that carries and all the potential detriment for both employers and employees in the scheme The amendment seeks to address two issues: first, that it should not be government policy to require trustees of pension schemes materially open to new entrants with strong employer covenants to adopt a strategy that will result in them de-risking their investments unnecessarily and prematurely, for all the reasons that other noble Lords have clearly articulated; and, secondly, that the Secretary of State, in exercising powers under Schedule 10 to make provisions through regulation on the funding of defined benefit schemes, should make provisions that are consistent with the policy in the White Paper statement that running on with employer support could be an acceptable long-term strategy for a materially open scheme. The amendment is consistent with any reading of the government policy in the White Paper, but it seeks to ensure that it happens.
Pension Schemes Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2020-06-30
Topic: Labor
Anthony Gueterbock (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, on bringing forward this amendment. It is vitally important that the many contributors to these open schemes have comfort that these schemes will continue and will provide them with a reasonable level of benefit when they retire. I am grateful to the Railways Pension Scheme for a very useful briefing, which other noble Lords have seen. I myself am not a member of that pension scheme, but I have a large number of friends who are among its 350,000 members. I think it is relevant that 100,000 of them are still active, and that number will probably continue. That will happen, as the noble Baroness said, in the schemes for local authorities, nuclear decommissioning and many other sectors. The real point is that many of the people contributing to these funds are comparatively low paid. Perhaps the Minister when she comes to respond can explain why the Government think it is a good idea to allow the schemes to require a greater contribution from the members and from the employers for no particular benefit. It seems absolutely clear that open and closed schemes must be treated separately. In ending, I ask the Minister to explain to me and other noble Lords why Ministers are not going along with this amendment. It seems so simple and well thought through, and I will certainly support it if the noble Baroness decides to divide the House.
Pension Schemes Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2020-06-30
Topic: Labor
Peter Snape (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I will confine my remarks to the impact of this amendment on the Railways Pension Scheme, and I join other noble Lords who expressed support for the amendment. As a former railwayman I was a member of the RPS in my younger days, although I was sensible enough—if that is the right term—to transfer to the parliamentary pension scheme when I was elected to the other place many years ago. However, I remain in contact with many of my former colleagues within the railway industry, and certainly they and the trustees of the Railways Pension Scheme have expressed their concern about the impact of this legislation on their future policy I remind the Minister that the RPS is a final salary defined benefit scheme that replaced the British Rail Pension Scheme after privatisation in 1993. Successive Ministers since then—among them those as distinguished as the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham—have assured the Railways Pension Scheme that matters will continue pretty much as before, and phrases such as "mirror image" and "the continuation of the present scheme" have been used. To find ourselves in the position that we will be in if this amendment is rejected is, to say the least, something of a surprise I have to tell noble Lords that the future of the Railways Pension Scheme is of massive concern among the railway unions, one of which, the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers—I used to be a member of its predecessor, the National Union of Railwaymen—has already balloted or threatened to ballot its members about the future of the scheme. The acceptance of this amendment would go some way to ease the fears that many members of the scheme feel about the future However, the trustees of the RPS themselves have expressed concern about the future. Without this amendment being written into the Bill, they feel that the regulations which will follow will force trustees to take short-term investment decisions rather than the long-term and ethical decisions that the RPS takes at the present time. Indeed, one of them passed a comment to me that "We will be forced in the end to buy nothing else but government gilts"—which is probably not an investment path that most advisers would recommend in the current circumstances To ensure that the RPS is traditionally able to make long-term and ethical investments, I make this plea to the Minister to write this amendment into the Bill. It may well be that the noble Earl, Lord Howe, says to us, "We hear what you say. We are conscious that there is concern; we will look at this. Of course, many of your fears are groundless, and Ministers will bear all these fears in mind". However, over the years that I have been a Member of the other place and your Lordships’ House, Ministers have come and gone. The other day I counted that 27 Ministers for Transport have been around in my time in one House or the other. Ministerial pledges are all very well, but times change—not quite as often as Ministers.
Pension Schemes Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2020-06-30
Topic: Labor
Maeve Christina Mary Sherlock (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, we all believe that trustees of DB schemes should have a clearly defined funding and investment strategy for insuring pensions in the long term. However, if that is pursued in a way driven by the need to protect members in closed maturing DB schemes, then schemes with strong covenants open to new entrants risk being swept up in an approach that is wrong for them. As closed DB schemes increasingly mature, the regulator will expect them to de-risk and reduce their deficits. However, if that approach is applied in a blanket form it will force some open schemes to de-risk prematurely, putting pressure on employers and, in the railway scheme with its shared-cost basis, on employees too. Given all the concerns expressed, will the Minister accept this amendment?
Reading Terrorist Attack — House of Lords, 2020-06-23
Topic: Law and Crime
Meta Ramsay (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, this is another tragic loss of life apparently by the hand of a person recently in prison. Is the Minister confident that the Prison Service has the resources to recognise potential danger in those who pass through its hands? When I was on the ISC, that was the kind of issue we discussed with the heads of the intelligence and security services. My noble friend Lord Rosser raised the question of why the ISC has not been formed again since the last election. Can the Minister please give some reason as to why it has not been formed? When will it be? Is it not a disgrace that in these dangerous times we have no parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee, amid reports in the media that one of the reasons for the delay is that the Government Whips are playing political games with who they are going to nominate from their own party?
Reading Terrorist Attack — House of Lords, 2020-06-23
Topic: Law and Crime
Jonathan Toby Harris (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I refer to my interests in the register. I welcome the Minister’s reaffirmation of the intention to legislate on a protect duty. Reference has already been made to the bravery of the unarmed police officer who rugby tackled the alleged perpetrator. Can the Minister tell us whether any armed response units were scrambled to the scene and how long it took them to arrive? I am aware from my work on London’s preparedness that, in recent incidents in the capital, armed police have been on the scene within a small handful of minutes. London is resourced well in recognition of the higher level of risk. My purpose is not to criticise Thames Valley Police but to establish whether there are sufficient armed police outside London. What are the Government doing about this?
Reading Terrorist Attack — House of Lords, 2020-06-23
Topic: Law and Crime
Alfred Dubs (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I agree that we saw the police at their very best in Reading a few days ago. I welcome the extra £90 million a year that will be allocated to counterterrorism policing. If I were a member of the intelligence and security services, I would want to find out from MI5 how many of the 30,000 people on a theoretical list it would like to keep under closer scrutiny. In other words, no matter what its resources are, is it in difficulty and does it not have enough resources to watch all those people? Will the Minister also comment on an added difficulty facing the security services? We have seen a resurgence of the threat from far-right terrorists as well, so the resources of the security services must be divided across a very wide spectrum indeed.
Corporate Insolvency and Governance Bill — House of Lords, 2020-06-23
Topic: Labor
Diana Mary Warwick (Labour, Centre-left): I added my name to Amendment 13 and I set out in Committee my concerns about the Bill. As I said then, I fully support the intention behind it—that the disruption caused by Covid-19 should not be allowed to trigger the failure of otherwise financially viable companies—but I was anxious, and I remain anxious, that some of the permanent and far-reaching proposals would be damaging to pension funds and to their members in the longer term. I assumed that this damage was unintended and was caused by the speed with which this package of protective measures had had to be introduced, and I am pleased that the Government have gone some way to acknowledging this in the amendments they have brought forward Other noble Lords have set out in detail the problems that the Bill would cause as currently drafted. I emphasise just one point in relation to defined benefit pension schemes. The stability and effectiveness of the current system in dealing with insolvency has depended on unsecured pension debts ranking side by side with debts owed to other unsecured lenders. This has underpinned all valuation funding and covenant discussions. The super-priority status granted by the Bill to finance debts in an insolvency following a moratorium undermines that stability and endangers members of affected pension schemes, while preventing the PPF acting effectively as creditor. As I said in Committee, it also undermines the role of the regulator. However, the Government have clearly made efforts to address these concerns and go some way to addressing the issues raised by me and other noble Lords. I have been convinced that the Government want to make this work and will ensure that the PPF has access to and influence on discussions about recovery plans The Secretary of State will have access to considerable Henry VIII powers in the Bill and will be able to intervene swiftly if it seems that restructuring plans and insolvency procedures are being abused, to the detriment of pension scheme members. So in thanking the Minister for the way he has responded to the concerns we in this House have expressed about the Bill, I urge him to stay alert to any attempts to undermine the assurances he has given that the position of pension scheme members will not be weakened, and that their lifeboat—the protective umbrella of the PPF—will not be undermined in any restructuring and insolvency discussions.
Corporate Insolvency and Governance Bill — House of Lords, 2020-06-23
Topic: Government Operations
Winifred Ann Taylor (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I echo what the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, said. She and I serve on the Constitution Committee, which raised quite a few concerns about this Bill. I want to say a few words about Clause 22. As the Minister outlined, the Government are now adding a limitation to it so that the expiry date cannot be extended beyond two years after Royal Assent. That amendment is very similar to the one that I moved in Committee. I am very pleased that the Government have acknowledged what the Constitution Committee said about the extent of the power that was being given, and I am glad that this change is being incorporated in the Bill Having said that, and having welcomed the changes that the Government have introduced in other areas, there are some very significant general concerns, that I and many others have, that have been highlighted by this Bill and by the extent of the government amendments that have had to come forward following Committee. Committee raised a series of genuine problems, some of which the Government have addressed, but this illustrates some of the dangers of fast-tracking legislation, even when, as the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, said, there have been previous consultations. It certainly illustrates the dangers of using emergency legislation. We all accept that emergency legislation in this area is needed because of Covid-19, but it illustrates the difficulty of using emergency legislation to make permanent changes at the same time in this very rushed way I ask the Minister to bear in mind that we will have other legislation coming forward. I hope that Ministers will learn the lessons of this legislation. This is a complex Bill—the previous debate showed that—and this is not really an adequate way of scrutinising such complex issues. Therefore, I hope that when we have other legislation because of Covid-19 or Brexit, the Government are mindful and give time for proper consideration of all aspects of such Bills Having said that, I welcome the specific change to Clause 22, and I am very pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, having said last week that he would look at this again, has produced this government amendment.
Corporate Insolvency and Governance Bill — House of Lords, 2020-06-23
Topic: Labor
Peter Hain (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I was very happy to add my name to Amendment 15, which has been spoken to so eloquently and with unrivalled expertise and authority on this matter by the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann. I am very concerned about the threat to the Pension Protection Fund. I am proud to say that it started life under the last Labour Government in 2005, and I was subsequently Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. It is an important lifeboat, but it could be threatened if the consequences of insolvency, particularly with defined benefits, rebound into the PPF Although I welcome the concessions and responses that the Minister has made through these amendments, and what he has said as a result of the arguments put by the noble Baronesses, Lady Altmann and Lady Bowles, and others, including my noble friends Lady Drake and Lady Warwick, I still think there is a real risk involved. I hope that today, he will give greater recognition to that fact and that he and the Secretary of State will be vigilant in ensuring that the Government are fully cognisant of their concerns about the future viability of the vital Pension Protection Fund.
Corporate Insolvency and Governance Bill — House of Lords, 2020-06-23
Topic: Labor
Jean Lesley Patricia Drake (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, the Government have tabled a number of helpful amendments in this group to address concerns raised about the impact of this Bill on the position of pension schemes, PPF and the Pensions Regulator, including access to the table, the court and the deployment of creditor rights during any moratorium or subsequent restructuring process. I thank the Minister for that However, I remain concerned that a PPF assessment period and a pension scheme Section 75 debt are not triggered during a moratorium or a restructuring plan. In a company voluntary arrangement, they would have been triggered when the proposal was filed with the court. This means that the PPF access to the share of the vote, exercised on behalf of the pension scheme, relates to the scheme’s full debt, giving it greater influence. In a restructuring plan, the voting rights to be exercised by the PPF would be set by the court. The Bill makes no provision as to what these should be. Given that the scheme’s full debt will not have been triggered, the most likely outcome will be reduced voting rights, reflecting a much smaller allowance for the defining of the debt. This will unquestionably put the PPF as a scheme at a disadvantage compared with other creditors such as loan providers, where the full value of their debt will be recognised, or landlords who will likely have voting rights based on the valuation of their full contract.