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Pensions Bill

moved Amendment No. 90C: 90C: Clause 31, page 14, line 16, leave out ““an employer”” and insert ““a person”” The noble Lord said: In moving Amendment No. 90C, I shall speak also to the other amendments in this group. These government amendments are designed to ensure that the Pensions Regulator can respond effectively to all instances of non-compliance. Under Clause 31, the regulator can issue a compliance notice to an employer who fails to meet one of the employer duty provisions. However, there are two scenarios in which this provision would not enable the regulator to issue such a notice. The first scenario is where a person fails to meet one of their duties but is no longer subject to that duty at the time that the regulator wishes to issue a compliance notice. For example, an employer might fail automatically to enrol a jobholder, but the jobholder might then leave the job before a compliance notice was issued. Under current provisions, it is not clear that the regulator would be able to seek unpaid contributions on behalf of that jobholder. The second scenario is where a duty applies to a person other than an employer. The duties set out in Clauses 2 to 10 will, in the main, fall to employers. These include the core new duties of automatically enrolling jobholders into a pension scheme and paying minimum contributions into that scheme. However, regulations under those sections may prescribe a small number of duties on other individuals. For example, Clause 9 enables regulations to be made detailing the information that a ““prescribed person”” needs to give to the jobholder. That person would not necessarily be an employer; they could be, for example, a trustee or manager of an occupational pension scheme or the provider of a workplace personal pension. Where duties arise on individuals other than employers, it is right that the regulator should be able to issue a notice if those duties are not met. These amendments will enable the regulator to take that action. It also follows that the Pensions Regulator must be able to issue a notice to a third party who contributes to a breach of the employer duties, whether that duty was breached by an employer or by another person. That is what Amendment No. 90P achieves. In short, these amendments will support a fair and proportionate compliance regime. I beg to move.