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Pensions Bill

Let me start with share fishermen. The position is that, under the Bill as drafted with Clause 84, they are not treated as workers. We seek to remove Clause 84, but they will be brought back in because they are people who are working on ships, so they will be part of the consultation that needs to be undertaken. The noble Lord is right to say that the provision is not very precise about who is included and who is not. That is because it is a highly complex situation. In moving the Motion, I described the situation where you have a non-UK resident working on an overseas vessel that happens into our waters on a journey somewhere else. Currently, because they could be treated as workers carrying out work within Great Britain, they could technically be within the scheme; that would not make sense. Equally, as I pointed out, they could be UK residents on UK-flagged vessels operational outside of UK waters. In principle, we expect those people to be included. There are complexities and a lot of work has to be done to consult with industry, trade unions and others to ensure that we set the guidelines appropriately. That is why the provisions are framed on this basis. The noble Lord asked about Amendment No. 136B. We want here to separate the provisions under which Orders in Council are the route to making regulations. As the noble Lord will be aware from his time in Northern Ireland, issues dealing with territorial matters are dealt with by Orders in Council rather than by the Secretary of State. On dock workers, the understanding is that they would be covered as land-based workers, but if individuals were in categories where it was not clear, the consultation that we would undertake would, we hope, identify them and enable the regulations to cover them. That is why this rather large group of amendments is constructed as it is, as an attempt to make sure that we can be more precise about who should be in and who should be out of auto-enrolment duties.