Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)

I thank the noble Lord and the noble Baroness. Like magic, I have just received the answer to one of the noble Baroness’s questions. I will address the questions as they came and start with the noble Lord, Lord Redwood. The Bill we discussed last week is currently awaiting Royal Assent and is not yet an Act, but, on a personal level, I am awfully grateful to your Lordships’ House for passing that legislation. As the Minister for Standards in the Cabinet Office, I was here, as the noble Lord will be aware, when we discussed it. As the Minister for Standards and Conduct across government, the subject of mentoring and support in the area for which I have responsibility and more widely has been the subject of conversations I have had. I look forward to being able to bring forward recommendations when I have been in post slightly longer looking at this in the round. I reassure the noble Lord that this is under active consideration. In response to the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, pensions have been based on claimed salary, not entitled salary, since 2015. On the issue of forfeiture—a nice segue, if I may congratulate the noble Baroness— I will write to her with the detail but there are currently no active considerations in this space, so we will not be bringing forward an amendment to the Pension Schemes Bill, which I am sure noble Lords will be grateful of at this stage of ping-pong. Having said that, the noble Baroness raises a very important point about wider standards issues and how everything operates in the round. She and I are jointly committed to upholding the highest standards in public life, and I will write to her with all the details on her specific questions. I thank noble Lords for their consideration of this order. Though technical in nature, the measure is essential for maintaining the integrity of our statutory framework and ensuring that the law accurately reflects decades of established policy. As I have outlined, this order is fundamentally about regularisation; we are addressing a historical discrepancy that has spanned multiple Administrations and several decades. By formalising the exclusion of Permanent Secretaries’ pay from the ministerial salary formula, we are not creating new policy. I thank all noble Lords for the points they raised in today’s debate and I commend the order to the House.