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Postal Services Bill [HL]

Amendment 78A is really a rehash of my amendment to Clause 18. I said then that any amendment to the RMPP should require the consent of the trustee in consultation with members. On the subject of trustee consent, my noble friend Lord McKenzie said at col. 1060 of Hansard that the Secretary of State needs to be able to amend the structure of the scheme as regards investment, governance and funding without risking a veto from the trustee. The amendment that I propose today says that the trustee should have to consent to any relevant pension provision, which essentially means any benefits; in other words, the trustee should be able to comment on, and veto, amendments to the benefits structure. As regards consultation on members’ requirements, my noble friend Lord McKenzie said that members are adequately consulted because they have member-nominated trustees. That entirely misses the point that member-nominated trustees are subject to confidentiality obligations. I will spend one moment on the confidentiality obligation of the trustee. One day, when the Secretary of State is in his place, I will be able to ask him questions directly. I will return to the question of the letter from the chairman of the current pension scheme, who, on 18 February, wrote to the Secretary of State after a meeting with him. The letter was published by the Secretary of State on 23 February. As I have told noble Lords before, that date is important, because it was the day when Post Office workers, responding to the lurid headlines of, "Posties’ pensions now at risk", attended rallies and meetings convinced that their pensions were at stake. It did not matter how many times I or others who had some knowledge of the subject were able to say, "Not to worry". We could not say very much, because the confidentiality obligations of the member-nominated trustees are paramount. I asked some of my friends who are still trustees, as I once was, to tell me more about the sequence of events of the meeting, the letter, the publication and the retraction by the chairman—noble Lords may have missed that—in which, effectively, she disowned some of the things that she said in the letter following the meeting with the Secretary of State. I shall ask about those things again, because one day I will try to get a clear answer on the sequence of events. The member-nominated trustees have this confidentiality responsibility. That is why the second part of the amendment would require consultation with members if benefits are changed. The reference to Section 259 of the Pensions Act 2004 is a reference to the provision that says that members must be consulted if benefits are amended. It would not give members a power to veto any change or even to delay changes. I ask noble Lords to note that those two proposals go no further than what is required in every other private sector scheme and what currently applies to the Royal Mail pension plan. I ask the Committee to carefully consider and support the amendment, which I beg to move.