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Pensions Bill

moved Amendment No. 50: 50: Clause 15, page 7, line 36, at end insert— ““(1A) The Secretary of State may by regulations provide that subsection (1)(b) does not apply in relation to a scheme to which section 24 or (Quality requirement: other personal pension schemes) applies, if prescribed requirements are satisfied.”” The noble Lord said: I shall also speak to the other amendments in this group. Clause 15 is the first in a series of clauses setting out the minimum requirements for pension schemes that can be used to comply with the new employer duties. As it stands, the clause requires qualifying schemes to be UK tax registered, so as to enable scheme members and their employers to benefit from UK tax relief on their contributions. For scheme members, this is equivalent to a contribution from the Government, through a lower tax deduction, to their retirement savings. However, we recognise that individuals may be seconded to the UK from abroad for short periods of employment and that, prior to their arrival, some would have joined a pension scheme set up in their home countries, outside the UK tax registration regime. Government Amendment No. 50 will enable us to accommodate individuals in such circumstances. It contains a regulation-making power to allow the Secretary of State to specify in legislation that non-UK schemes can be qualifying schemes under the employer duty where they are not UK tax registered in prescribed circumstances, which are likely to be those in which their members are able to receive UK tax relief on their contributions made from UK earnings, as is permitted in certain circumstances by HMRC. The amendment and others in the group are concerned with ensuring that we support and encourage existing good-quality pension provision. We want to encourage employers to retain their existing pension arrangements, where those arrangements satisfy our minimum standards, by providing as much flexibility as possible for multinational employers with a multinational workforce. We also want to ensure that the widest range of schemes can be offered as qualifying schemes, but with the necessary safeguards to protect members’ interests. Schemes operated outside the UK could provide high-quality benefits and we do not want to prevent employers from offering them. However, such schemes are not subject to FSA regulation of their operations. Therefore, it is important to ensure a robust regulatory regime for non-UK-based schemes if they are to be used under the employer duty. With that in mind, Amendment No. 76 limits the application of the quality requirements set out in Clause 25 to UK-operated personal pension schemes whose operation is regulated by the Financial Services Authority. Amendment No. 81, meanwhile, brings in a new clause containing the power to prescribe in regulations the quality requirements for personal pension schemes whose operation falls outside the FSA’s regulatory remit. That is the case for non-UK-operated personal pensions. Taken together, Amendments Nos. 76 and 81 seek to future-proof our policy by being clear what the quality criteria are for schemes whose operations are regulated by the FSA, while enabling us to cater for schemes subject to a regulatory regime outside the UK or schemes with features not common to UK schemes where that might be appropriate. That will allow the Secretary of State to respond flexibly to the widest range of schemes and enable employers to retain diverse, high-quality pension provision. As a consequence of Amendments Nos. 50, 76 and 81, we are introducing a number of technical amendments to Clauses 18, 25 and 86, which make up the remaining amendments in the group. I hope that the Committee is in agreement with the proposals to support and encourage good-quality existing provision. I beg to move.