Viscount Thurso (LD)

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendments 34 and 37 and will briefly comment on the other amendments. Quickly, before I do that, I seek to assist the Minister with the question I asked her on the last group. I was written to by people who came together as a small group to protest against the failure of a trustee and an employer to award discretionary increases, contrary to their joint policy of matching inflation, originally published in 1989 and repeated in pensions guides and newsletters over the years. For the last four years, the employer has refused consent to modest discretionary increases recommended by the trustee and supported by the independent actuary. That is the situation I am looking at. I hope that is helpful. I turn to the current group. Let me say, first, in response to the noble Viscount’s amendment and his Clause 10 stand part notice—as he said, both are probing amendments—broadly speaking, I concur with him. If we had had regulations, draft regulations or just something to look at, an awful lot of these questions would not have needed to be put at this stage. As a matter of principle, I am always in favour of the affirmative procedure, rather than the negative one; I shall leave that there. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Davies, will speak eloquently to his own amendments in a moment, but they are a bit of a variation on the theme of the ones in my name. My Amendment 34 would, in Clause 10 and at line 23, “after ‘notified’ insert ‘and consulted’”. What that would do is to say that the trustees would have not only to notify the members but to consult them. My Amendment 37 is very much along the same lines. It would insert, at the end of proposed new subsection (2B), a new paragraph—paragraph (e)— “requiring that the trustees are satisfied that it is in the interests of the members that the power to pay surplus is exercised in the manner proposed in relation to a payment before it is made”. Both amendments seek to explore the relationship between the employer, the members and the trustees. I have listened to the arguments where it has been put forward that the employer has underwritten the surpluses, almost, and is at the mercy of the trustees. The case that I have put forward shows that, actually, there is often a power imbalance between the members—they are probably at the bottom of the pile—the trustees and the employer. I completely concur that the idea of mandating a response is wrong, but it is open to have regulations that require the trustees both to have regard to and to look at that, so that we reach a situation where members’ interests have at least equal value, in the eyes of the trustees, as the requirements of the employer. I feel that these amendments are very modest. Who knows what might happen later on, but this stage the amendments are designed to reinforce members’ ability to be consulted and know what is going on.