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Pensions Bill

moved Amendment No. 40: 40: After Clause 9, insert the following new Clause— ““Protection for employers (1) An employer shall not be required to give advice to jobholders or workers, either generally or on an individual basis, in respect of their rights under this Chapter. (2) An employer who provides information in compliance with any regulations issued under section 9 shall not incur any liability to any jobholder or worker to whom the information is given.”” The noble Baroness said: Amendment No. 40 inserts a new clause after Clause 9. The clause is entitled ““Protection for employers”” and deals with interactions between employers and jobholders in relation to automatic enrolment. I am inevitably dealing with one end of the see-saw to which my noble friend Lord Skelmersdale referred. The CBI’s submission to your Lordships’ House said quite clearly that employers must not be responsible for providing advice on savings. This has been echoed by other organisations; for example, the Association of Certified Accountants. The CBI says that it is the responsibility of the Government and the Personal Accounts Delivery Authority to provide advice. I am not sure that it is absolutely right since we do not expect PADA to be in existence much beyond the inception of personal accounts, but the Government certainly need to bear the primary responsibility. The Liberal Democrat Benches led an interesting debate earlier today in connection with Amendment No. 9 relating to the over-50s, a group which may need advice, but the problem is much wider than that. Employers are aware of the risks of being auto-enrolled into schemes from which their employees will gain no or insufficient benefit, but what employers are clear about is that it is not reasonable that they should be in the firing line to bear any risk related to that. My new clause has two subsections. The first says that employers are not required to give advice to jobholders or workers. They may choose to do so, that is entirely up to them, but they must not be required to. That is a declaratory thing that employers may find helpful. The second subsection says that employers do not incur any liability in respect of information given in accordance with Clause 9. We have just been discussing that clause. It gives the Secretary of State a wide power in relation to the giving of information. The only thing we have established so far is that the Government do not know what that will involve, which raises a lot of concerns for those who might end up on the receiving end of what these regulations may have in store. The boundary between information and advice is quite a fine one. One of the concerns is that the regulations, in setting information, may stray over that line into advice. Subsection (2) of my amendment effectively provides employers with a safe harbour if they comply with the Clause 9 regulations. The Minister has outlined that the Government will be taking advice from PADA. Generally there is a lack of clarity about what these information requirements will involve, in particular for employers. It is that lack of clarity that raises concerns in the minds of those acting on behalf of the business community. I hope that the Minister will see that my new clause provides needed reassurance to the business community, which will almost certainly have to bear the lion’s share of the burden of implementing personal accounts on auto-enrolment. What they do not want to bear is any of the liability that might go with people ending up inappropriately in automatic enrolment. I beg to move.