Clause 20
Pensions Bill
12:30 pm
Nigel Waterson (Shadow Minister, Work & Pensions; Eastbourne, Conservative)
This is a short, pithy clause, but it does not give much away. It is about how the authority is going to manage itself during its short life. Amendment No. 79 would take out the words ‘the Authority thinks appropriate’ and insert
“shall be specified in regulations”.
There is a general point to be made here. In his rather chirpy letter at the beginning of the Committee stage, the Minister talked about producing draft regulations during the Committee stage. Unless I have missed them, I have not seen any, and it would be interesting to know whether we shall see any such regulations for any clause of the Bill before we finish on Thursday this week.
We think that the wording should be made a bit clearer and more obvious. We have said that regulation would be one way of dealing with what the general guidance might be. It seems that the authority would be able to pick and choose, as it thinks appropriate according to the way that the clause is worded, what general guidance it will be subject to and what not.
The second part of that subsection talks about generally accepted principles of good corporate governance, and who can argue with that? However, we then have subsection (2), which we would remove in its entirety by means of amendment No. 80, and which qualifies even that expression. So there is that obligation to follow “good corporate governance” principles, but that obligation is
“subject to guidance falling within subsection (1)(a), and”—
this is the really interesting bit, Mr. Gale—
“applies only to the extent that the principles in question may reasonably be regarded as applicable in relation to a statutory corporation.”
Even if I were not a lawyer, I think that I would recognise a wholly circular argument when I saw one, and I shall be grateful if the Minister will try to explain to us precisely what that gobbledegook means, or whether he agrees with me that we could do a certain amount of judicious pruning of clause 20.