Clause 40
Pensions Bill
5:00 pm
Andrew Selous (Shadow Minister, Work & Pensions; South West Bedfordshire, Conservative)
I beg to move amendment No. 149, in clause 40, page 17, line 18, at end insert—
‘(1A) Records required in accordance with subsection (1) may be kept in any reasonable manner.’.
I return to a point I have made several times; the Bill is going to apply to a vast range of hugely diverse employers, from sandwich bars, hairdressers and small builders at one end of the scale to the ICIs, Vodafones and Shells of the corporate world at the other. Clause 40(1)(a) stipulates a form and a manner to be prescribed in which records should be kept. I merely seek reassurance that the Government will not be overly prescriptive. Most employers, probably, are reasonably computerised these days, but certainly not all. Some may prefer to have manual records or to keep their records in a multiplicity of ways. The point is that they need to be efficient, there needs to be some kind of audit trail, and they need to be complete. That is what we should seek, rather than being overly prescriptive as to how employers in a huge range of businesses they keep their records. If the Minister can reassure me regarding that, I will no doubt be happy to withdraw the amendment.