Schedule 3 - Abolition of Rail Regulator: Savings, &c. Question proposed, That this schedule be the Third schedule to the Bill.
Railways and Transport Safety Bill
10:15 am
Mrs Anne McIntosh (Vale of York, Conservative)
Briefly, and having spoken out of turn, Mr. Hurst, I ask the Minister to explain whether the savings referred to in the title will be made through the abolition of the rail regulator. We have already identified one increase—the £200,000 extra for non-executive members. After adding up the wage bills of the chairman, chief executive and at least three other members of the board, plus pensions for retiring members, I have great difficulty in identifying where savings could be made, and I invite the Minister to do so. Has the Treasury said that those people will all be paid less than the existing rail regulator? On the face of it, that will not be so.
Paragraph 5(2) states that
''the Secretary of State may continue to make payments in accordance with arrangements made before commencement for or in respect of a pension for a person who held the office of the Rail Regulator.''
What pension provision does the Minister have in mind? More pertinently, paragraph 5(3) states:
''The Secretary of State may pay compensation to the last person who held the office of the Rail Regulator.''
That raises a curious spectacle.