Clause 34 - Register of occupational and personal
Pensions Bill
2:00 pm
Mr Malcolm Wicks (Minister for pensions, Department for Work and Pensions; Croydon North, Labour)
Most of its supporters are in the home counties, so the hon. Gentleman does not represent them. However, that is enough about football, Mr. Griffiths, as I suspect that yours is another game.
Let me deal with the first of the provisions that will be at the heart of the regulator's new proportionate and targeted approach to pensions regulation—its power to collect and analyse information about schemes. We touched on that this morning. The clause provides that the regulator must set up and maintain a register of pension schemes. The Occupational Pensions Regulatory Authority is currently under a similar duty to hold such a register in its capacity as registrar of occupational and personal pension schemes under the Pension Schemes Act 1993. To prevent there being any extra burden on schemes that are currently registered, their registrations will simply be transferred to the new register. There is unlikely to be any change in the type of schemes that are required to register and schemes with only one member will continue to be exempt from registration.
As well as fulfilling the requirement that the regulator must hold a register of pension schemes to comply with article 9 of the occupational pensions
directive, the register will be used to assist members of the public to trace their pensions. That is an existing service, which last year provided contact names and addresses for more than 25,000 requests. Lost pensions are a significant issue which we will address later.
Clauses 35, 36, 37 and 55 set out additional details on the information to be provided by schemes for the purposes of the register, the regulator's powers to make use of the information including the provision of reports to the Secretary of State, and the duties of trustees and managers in respect of the register. The Committee may wish to discuss those powers and functions when we deal with those clauses, but it might also be helpful to do so now.
We addressed important concerns this morning. Many issues have been raised about accurate data, to which the hon. Member for Northavon (Mr. Webb) and Labour Members referred. We want to turn the position around. The information and register powers that we will discuss when we deal with these clauses will address that. At the heart will be the scheme return, which has been trialled with the industry in draft form, and which it welcomes. The scheme return will allow us to start to compile the accurate data that we need for the future. The regulator will be able to require the information covered in the scheme return, as the usual section 10 penalties referred to earlier will apply in the event of any default.
It will not be for the regulator as an institution to keep a record of every last member of every last pension scheme. That would not be sensible; there are many hundreds of schemes and at least 10 million scheme members. However, it is for the regulator to find out if a scheme's records are bad. For example, it can issue an improvement notice if a scheme cannot provide members with information. Whistleblowers will often be important in that. The regulator also has an objective to promote good administration.