---

Postal Services Bill [HL]

I have tabled Amendments 35 and 37 in this group. Not having spoken on the Bill before, I must declare an interest as the director of a mail order firm dispatching some 50,000 items a year—not that I believe that that in itself has anything to do with Part 2, which I like to think of by way of a quid pro quo for the inevitable angst of the Post Office union members. It is, as the noble Lord, Lord Clarke, has said, the part of the Bill which covers the taking over by the Government of the historic deficit in the Royal Mail pension scheme. I will also do my best not to make the Second Reading speech I would have made had I been able to remain to the end of that debate. That said, love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage. My two amendments in this group try to probe some of the definitions of the clause a little further. The Government have indicated in several policy papers and press releases that the qualifying time shall be set in reference to 16 December 2008, the day when the Hooper review was published. Unusually, that review was accepted on publication; the Government normally take two or three days at the very least to come to a decision on these matters—not that I am suggesting that the Secretary of State has done anything wrong in that. But 16 December was the day on which the Hooper review was published and therefore the day when it became clear that the historic pension liabilities of the RMPP were to be taken over by the taxpayer. However, nowhere is the vagueness indicated by the words, ""the time immediately before such date as may be prescribed"," in Clause 15 explained. We have not a clue—I do not think the Secretary of State has a clue—what that means and what timing he can give to those words. The Government’s memorandum to the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee explains this flexibility as necessary because of the possibility of EU state aid restrictions. I understand that, but I hope the Secretary of State will be able to give more detail about what requirements might have to be met to comply with EU state aid provisions and when these requirements might be known. Indeed, have the Government warned the Commission that they wish to give what might well be described in Brussels as state aid to Post Office Ltd? It seems to me that any state aid objection to the provisions in this part will either be so radical as to completely change the Government’s approach, in which case they will be back to square one, or so minor as not to require a change of date, in which case this flexibility will be unnecessary. Like the noble Lord, Lord Clarke, and the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, I also would like to know how the Government intend to deal with any changes to pension entitlement that might happen between the intended qualifying date and the date of the actual transfer. If an employee currently accruing rights under the defined benefits scheme is promoted this month, and so increases their final pensionable salary, their pre-December 2008 accrued rights will have been increased by a post-qualifying time event. Subsection (3) suggests that these enhanced rights will not be transferred to the new scheme. So who will pay them, or will they be lost to the deferred pensioner? If the latter, the Government will have an even bigger riot on their hands, not least from noble Lords behind the Secretary of State on his far left. I do not want to be seen as a conspiracy theorist but this lack of detail also opens up some worrying possibilities for the future. By having no meaningful definition of what "qualifying member" refers to, the Bill would make it possible for new members to be added to the pension scheme at some point in the future. Is this deliberate flexibility on the Government’s part, or are they setting up legislation that would allow them to undertake another bail-out of the RMPP at some point in the future once it has accrued new assets and liabilities, without needing to undergo the rigours of parliamentary scrutiny? If the latter, I, for one, believe that new primary legislation should be required. I note also the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, about those people who have not yet joined the pension scheme but may well do so before this great event comes into being. I, too, would like to know the answer to those particular problems.