Clause 55 - Use of information
Pensions Bill
4:00 pm
Mr Malcolm Wicks (Minister for pensions, Department for Work and Pensions; Croydon North, Labour)
Yes, my hon. Friend has re-ratted, as Churchill would have said. My hon. Friend was on a mission for me on the Conservative Benches. The record should show that he did not briefly join the Conservative party.
The amendment seeks to limit the information that the regulator may use in exercising its functions to registrable information, as defined in clause 35. Judging by what he said earlier, the hon. Member for Tatton has guessed that that would be highly damaging to the work of the regulator, because registrable information is limited and consists of the name and address of a scheme, its sponsoring employer or institution, and its trustees. The clause provides the regulator with flexibility to use all the information that it collects for any purpose connected with its functions, rather than have artificial barriers in the organisation that would prohibit effective regulation and might jeopardise scheme members' benefits by hindering information sharing.
I shall give an example of the impact of the amendment, if it were agreed and not withdrawn. Let us say that the regulator receives a whistleblower's report saying that two trustees are about to empty the scheme's bank account and leave the country. What can it do? I can hear hon. Members thinking that it could appoint a trustee or get an injunction—but that would not be so. If the hon. Gentleman's amendment were agreed, that would be prevented and the regulator would be unable to use the whistleblower's information to protect the scheme members. The amendment would at least allow trustees' names and
addresses held on the register to be used, so the regulator could send them a bon voyage card.