---

Pensions Bill

I suppose, technically and formally, we ought to withdraw the first amendment to the amendment before we get cracking on the second amendment to the amendment, but it will be for the convenience of the Committee if I speak now. Unlike the situation in which my noble friend Lady Noakes found herself a few minutes ago, in this case the Minister has not quite shot my fox. Indeed, it is not even wounded. I said on Second Reading that I assumed that when an employee opted out of automatic enrolment within the permitted period the money would have been put into some kind of escrow account. The Minister did not correct me then; he has not done so since in one of his now famous letters; and he did not just now when he succeeded in pre-empting my noble friend. I can only assume that I was right. The Minister said that it is too soon to state how this will operate in terms of who will control the money and take responsibility for repayment and how it will be refunded. I certainly accept that. However, it is not too early to say to whom it will be refunded: in other words, who will get the money. There must be a policy on this somewhere; without one, you can hardly start discussions with stakeholders. Will the employee get only his input back and the employer get his whack, or will the employee get the lot? I said on Second Reading that I doubted that interest would be paid to anyone and I assume that this is still the Government’s intention. I have already expressed my concern about the amount of information flying around with regard to Clause 5 and automatic re-enrolment. Clause 7 concerns the jobholder’s right to opt out. Subsection (7) tries to specify the content, or at least some of it, that must be sent to the jobholder. We know that the jobholder must give notice of his intention to opt out in a prescribed form as specified in subsection (6), which Amendment No. 24 will not amend. That subsection, together with subsection (7), remains as it is printed in the Bill. They both, however, will refer to new subsections (4) and (5), inserted by Amendment No. 24. I am sorry that this is all so complicated, but the complication is not of my making. The purpose of my amendment is to establish just how much information the notice in subsections (4) and (5) in government Amendment No. 24 will consist of and to find out how the jobholder is expected to know what the Bill calls ““the effect”” that the notice will have on him and his further actions. Obviously, one effect is that he will lose the pension savings that he would have had had he remained in the scheme; the other is that he will get his money back. Will the information in the notice be as basic as that, or does the Secretary of State intend to prescribe something more complicated?