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Pensions Bill

moved Amendment No. 130EQ: 130EQ: Clause 106, page 50, line 25, after ““scheme”””” insert ““, in paragraph (b), after ““began”” insert ““, subject to any prescribed exception,””. (3A) In that definition,”” The noble Lord said: I shall speak also to government Amendments Nos. 130ER to 130ET, and 141A, 141B and 142C, as well as to Amendment No. 130EU, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale. The first set of amendments seeks to bring schemes which currently fall outside the financial assistance scheme and Pension Protection Fund into the financial assistance scheme. As Members of the Committee may recall, the financial assistance scheme assists schemes that commenced winding-up between 1 January 1997 and 5 April 2005. Entry conditions for the Pension Protection Fund require the employer to have experienced an insolvency event on or after 6 April 2005 at the PPF’s start date. A small number of schemes have been caught between the FAS and the PPF because the employer went insolvent before the PPF’s start date, but the pension scheme delayed winding up until after that date. Government Amendments Nos. 130EQ, 130ES and 141A will enable us to bring forward regulations to allow these schemes into the FAS by making exceptions to the current requirement that pension schemes must have started to wind up before 6 April 2005 to qualify for the FAS. Members of these schemes are in a similar position to those already helped by the FAS, and through no fault of their own. We therefore intend to bring these schemes into the FAS. In order to bring schemes such as Desmond and Sons into the FAS as quickly as possible, these amendments ensure that the regulation-making power will commence on Royal Assent, and the regulations are subject to the negative procedure. I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, for his amendment, which also seeks to achieve this end. I hope that he is content with our amendments, which will indeed help those schemes caught between the FAS and the PPF and so will feel able to withdraw his amendment. The next group of amendments, Amendments Nos. 130ET, 141B and 142C, relate to an extension of the current restriction on annuitisation. The Young scheme assets review recommended continuing to restrict the purchase of annuities to protect scheme assets pending the Government taking them in. This amendment seeks to extend the restriction on annuitisation introduced by regulations following the Pensions Act 2007 that has recently expired. This extension will have a retrospective effect back to 26 June 2008 so that there is no gap between the regulations which expired on 25 June and the new powers. This amendment will also introduce a new sanction where annuity contracts entered into contrary to the restriction can be made void by the FAS scheme manager. The new sanction under which annuity contracts entered into contrary to the extended restriction can be made void is also retrospective, covering the period from 26 June onwards. The new clause comes into effect on Royal Assent and applies to the whole of the United Kingdom. Finally, Amendment No. 130ER relates to solvent schemes becoming eligible for the FAS. Noble Lords will be aware that we laid the Financial Assistance Scheme (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2008 before Parliament on 18 June and, indeed, debated them in the Chamber just last Monday. Further to the existing employer insolvency-related conditions, these regulations include an alternative qualifying condition such that if the employer has paid the debt to the pension scheme he was legally obliged to pay, the scheme could join the FAS. This brings many schemes with solvent employers into the FAS. While we expect the regulations to cover those schemes with solvent employers of which we are already aware, the history of the FAS shows that new schemes can come forward with circumstances that no one had realised existed. By removing the requirement to have any condition on the employer in primary legislation, this technical amendment will provide us with the latitude to include more pension schemes within the FAS. I hope that these amendments will receive the support of the Committee. I beg to move.