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Postal Services Bill [HL]

My Lords, Amendment 47 deals with the protection of members’ rights under the RMPP. As we have said before in these debates, the power to amend the RMPP needs to go no further than dissecting out the rights that will be transferred to the new public scheme. At the end of the exercise members should have the same rights as they had immediately before the order under Section 16 was made. I have some concerns about the nature of some rights or expectations under the pension scheme. They relate to the entitlement of members in certain events which cannot be anticipated. If a member currently has to retire early because of his or her health or if he or she is made to leave because of redundancy, the RMPP provides a pension. That is very common in pension schemes. Until that person’s health breaks down or until he or she is made redundant it might not be clear that he or she has an entitlement to ill-health or redundancy terms. The second part of Amendment 47 makes it plain that the division of the RMPP into qualifying accrued rights and other rights would not affect the position. It does not say that a member would have a right to a pension in any particular circumstance; it just says that the division will not change the picture. Amendment 49 is also consequential. If accepted, subsection (3) would read, ""‘The relevant pensions provision’ means the provision for the payment of pensions or other benefits which is contained in the RMPP and includes the rights of members that are contingent upon the retirement of a member in the event of his retirement on the grounds of redundancy or ill-health"." Early retirement and loss of job for all sorts of reasons are pretty basic matters in pension schemes. If the Government do not feel able to accept these words, I would have thought they could come back with some assurances on the spirit of the pension scheme, not simply from the Civil Service days or from public sector schemes but in relation to looking after people who through no fault of their own have to take early retirement. I hope the Government will look closely at this in order to give workers the assurances they require; so that when they go about their daily business, they are able to say, "At least if I get knocked over or bitten badly by a dog and it stops me working"—it does happen—"there is provision within the RMPP to make sure I do not lose out". I beg to move.