Clause 10 - The Determinations Panel
Pensions Bill
3:45 pm
Mr Nigel Waterson (Eastbourne, Conservative)
I am not sure that I can match the hon. Gentleman for sustained scepticism, but let me chime in on some of his points. I was also struck by the provision. I have a series of questions to ask the Under-Secretary. Initially, the clause is a new entity. It does not build on anything, nor does it develop or slightly change something that was in the 1995 legislation. It is within, outwith or slightly separate from the new regulator. Clearly, the need for a separate sub-organisation has never been felt under OPRA, even though we have been living with the consequences of the human rights legislation for a few years. What is the purpose behind the provision? Is it just another layer of potentially expensive bureaucracy or will it serve a purpose?
Initially I turned, as one does in the early stages of the discussion of a Bill in Committee, to the explanatory notes but, with respect to the officials who drafted it, all that the notes do is to explain the Bill in English. I assumed that the clause was a way to demonstrate with some assurance that, as a country, we had complied with the requirements of the human rights legislation. The Under-Secretary was clear and open in his remarks that it was not sufficient in itself to have a determinations panel. What will it be for? As he said, we have the tribunal and the ombudsman. It seems that the tribunal gets us home in respect of human rights legislation.
Why do we need another layer of decision making? I apologise for paraphrasing but, as the hon. Member for Northavon said, the regulator itself is meant to be separate and impartial when undertaking such an important job. It is meant to look at matters from an independent perspective and take decisions about what action should take place. Other safeguards are built into the Bill, but the clause is gold plating gone mad, especially as it will not deliver a result along the lines of a challenge under the human rights legislation.
How will the panel operate? Again, I shall take up what the hon. Member for Northavon said. Will it have its own office? Will it be physically separate from the rest of the regulator? Will it have its own support staff? Will there be Chinese walls within the organisation? We know what it will not be. We know who will not serve on it. All those who are ineligible to do so are set out under subsection (5). It cannot be anyone who is a member of the regulator or any of the staff of the regulator. Members of the panel must be people who are nothing to do with the regulator. The same goes for the pension protection fund, the board of the fund and the staff of the board.
What sort of people will be members of the panel? During my everyday life, I have not come across a determinations panel. Will it be made up of lawyers, laymen, the great and the good or cronies of leading members of the Government? Will they be ex-flatmates of the Prime Minister? What qualifications will they have to have to be members of the determinations panel? Will the panel be a high-profile and prestigious body of which people will be clamouring to become members? How will it operate? [Hon. Members: ''Is that an application?''] Who knows what the future will bring? How will it operate? It sounds as though its members will be extremely well paid and its work will
not be overly onerous. Will the Under-Secretary give me answers to at least some of my questions? Within the estimates of extra cost, how much is the determinations panel likely to cost, with all its support staff, and do we really need it in what is already a fairly complicated structure?