Clause 6 - Supplementary powers
Pensions Bill
3:15 pm
Mr Nigel Waterson (Eastbourne, Conservative)
Well, let me get my retaliation in first.
I am rather intrigued that, unlike the PPF, which will be allowed to borrow money—that raises a host of implications that we will deal with later in the Bill—the regulator will not be allowed to borrow. What is the reasoning behind that distinction? The Minister may be able to point me to a precedent. Perhaps, even more embarrassingly, it will be a Conservative precedent, but this is an amazingly open extension of powers. We go to all this trouble to examine the powers and functions line by line, and then, blow me, we find that under clause 6, the regulator can apparently do almost anything he wants, over and above those powers and functions.