Clause 7 - Fixing of claimant's retirement provision
State Pension Credit Bill [Lords]
11:30 am
Mr James Clappison (Hertsmere, Conservative)
At the risk of having my words picked up and swept away under your eagle eye, Mr. Atkinson, I shall say that I think I can manage to stay in order in talking to amendment No. 29. It is a simple probing amendment concerning the technicalities of clause 7, which according to the explanatory notes establishes that
''Specifying an assessed income period has the effect of fixing, for that period, what is to be treated as an element of the claimant's retirement provision''.
That is important when it comes to determining how much the pension credit is going to be.
Subsection (4) creates a mechanism for making adjustments to the amount of retirement provision. The explanatory notes say:
''The intention is that the regulations will provide for the amount of income from a pension or annuity to be deemed to increase from time to time in line with the terms of a claimant's pension or annuity arrangements and for the rate of return on capital to be treated as adjusted from time to time. In some cases, the assessed amount may be deemed to stay the same.''
The subsection provides that the assessed period should be deemed to change in that way ''except in prescribed circumstances''. We would simply like to know what those prescribed circumstances might be, and when the amount would not be adjusted in line with changes in pensions and annuities, as the explanatory memorandum is silent on that point. The purpose of the amendment is to deem which prescribed circumstances would be an exception to that rule.
Amendment No. 28 concerns subsection (4)(b), which provides that the assessed amount of income from capital may be increased or decreased by regulation. We would like to know a little more about how return on capital is to be so adjusted, particularly in the light of earlier remarks. It would be helpful to have an extra explanation of that.