Clause 1 - Amendment of the Income and Corporation Taxes Act 1988
Pension Annuities (Amendment) Bill
9:00 am
Mr David Curry (Skipton and Ripon, Conservative)
The Minister referred to Second Reading. We should ensure that we do not re-write history. The Minister chose to stand up at 1.45 pm on Second Reading, having been present since 9.30 am. For a long time prior to that, no Labour Member had spoken, but two then spoke for more than an hour and a half. I am sure that their speeches were solid, substantial and interesting, but they were also extremely long. At 2.10 pm there was a danger that we might have an ''I spy Strangers'' motion, which would have closed down the debate. I had no assurances that that would not happen. Therefore, my only option to ensure that the Bill received a Second Reading was to rule for closure.
I had told the Minister on several previous occasions that we had hoped to move the closure motion slightly earlier because there was subsequent business that we regarded as important; it was not that I did not find her intervention fascinating. I put that on the record.
The Minister said that she regards the amendments as purely technical to make my Bill work in the way in which I want it to work. Having read them, I cannot say that I have reached the same conclusion. The Minister knows more about such matters than I do, as that is her job, and it is not mine. I make no pretence about the effort involved in coming to terms with complicated matters such as section 630 of the Income and Corporation Taxes Act 1988. However, I want to be clear that that is the purpose of the amendments, because the way in which I understand them is as follows.
Amendment No. 6 relates to section 630 of the Act, which defines all its terms. My Bill defines a personal pension fund. I understand that the amendment would remove the concept of a retirement investment fund from the definitions. I am worried that that is the first pecking away at the legislation, prior to its subsequent disembowelling. The amendment would remove from the standard definition in ICTA the notion of a retirement income fund as a new instrument. It therefore brings the definition into line with the subsequent amendments, which would destroy the concept.
I have enormous problems working out where amendment No. 15 would go. It refers to the end of line 23, but line 23 is a title. I am therefore not sure how it fits into the text and whether it is supposed to go at the end of a previous bit or is a new section after the title. It is not clear. The amendment seems to allow the part of the fund that has been drawn down to be called a retirement income fund. It therefore removes my definition of a retirement income fund and substitutes that title for the draw-down funds that may exist under the present mechanism. That is my understanding. Until now, I seem to be winning the title and losing the substance, and left with a fancy name for a shell.
The purpose of my proposed new paragraph (a) is to ensure that only approved institutions can manage a retirement income fund, as specified in the Act. The Government seem to want to remove that protection for investors. If the amendment were accepted, a retirement income fund would have no supervision and could place its funds in the hands of bodies that are outside the remit of the Financial Services Authority. It could even entrust them to me to manage, which would be a serious error. I realise that later Government amendments seem to define regulatory authorities, but at the moment that is how I interpret the amendments.
If the Minister says clearly what I understood to be the case—that the purpose of the amendments is not as I describe but merely to put my text into the correct legal form—and confirms that it is not the beginning of the removal of the substance of my Bill but merely a re-writing in correct legal terms, I shall trust her. However, she grins to such an extent that I am not sure where I stand. Will she make that clear?