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Pensions Bill

moved Amendment No. 136AC: 136AC: Before Clause 115, insert the following new Clause— ““Review of operation of Act (1) The Secretary of State must, before the end of 2014, prepare a report on the operation of the provisions of this Act. (2) The Secretary of State may prepare subsequent reports on the operation of the provisions of this Act. (3) The Secretary of State must lay a copy of any report prepared under this section before Parliament.”” The noble Lord said: Amendment No. 136AC is an exploratory amendment to find out the Government’s attitude. Precedent would suggest that they will accept the spirit of what is set out here, if not the detail. It is a familiar point. We debated it during our consideration of the last Pensions Bill. On that occasion, the amendment was accepted by the Government, for which I am grateful. The point is that post-legislative scrutiny is just as important as pre-legislative scrutiny. You could make an argument, particularly in relation to pensions legislation, that post-legislative scrutiny is rather more important, because all the mistakes appear to take place afterwards in the administration of the scheme. Things are missed out. Mistakes rarely occur because the legislation was set out badly. In my experience, they have often been the result of administrative error. Errors of this kind take place and no one should be totally surprised about them. The only trouble is that, if errors take place in pensions, the costs are substantial. That is basically the case. I will not set it out again, because the Minister has heard all my arguments previously. He has only to look them up and read them from 12 months ago and he will see the case all set out. I am basically asking for some kind of checking mechanism that the purposes of the Bill amount to the reality in the later Act and how it goes into effect. As I am sure the Minister has discovered, the words in this amendment are taken exactly from the words of the last Pensions Act. The Minister was enthusiastic at the time in accepting that clause and those exact words. One would think, therefore, that the argument is fairly strong. This pensions legislation is a twin measure of two Bills: one Act already, another Act to come. It would be odd to have a post-legislative scrutiny clause in one part of it but not in the other. As the Minister so obligingly agreed last time to the detail of and exact way in which this amendment is formulated, for once the case that I am putting is totally unanswerable. I beg to move.