Clause 27
Pensions Bill
4:00 pm
Mike O'Brien (Minister of State (Pension Reform), Department for Work and Pensions; North Warwickshire, Labour)
The reason is that we want the Pensions Regulator to be able to take these steps. The clause makes clear that failure to comply with the employers’ duties in chapter 1 will not give rise to an individual right to pursue a case for breach of statutory duty. Otherwise individuals would have to take individual action in the courts. Our preference is that the Pensions Regulator will take on the role of enforcing employer compliance with the new duties, alongside its responsibility for regulating the new personal accounts scheme.
We want to ensure that the route to a remedy for an individual whose employer has been non-compliant is through enforcement by the Pensions Regulator rather than through that kind of individual action. That would ensure both more effective enforcement and, importantly, clarity for employers who might otherwise fear that they could face action simultaneously on two fronts. Clause 27 clarifies that and also confirms that nothing in chapters 1 and 2 affects any other individual right to take legal action. Other individual rights to take legal action—concerning employment contracts for example—will remain and will be dealt with separately. The clause is therefore crucial in setting out who has the right to enforce employers’ duties. The answer is that the regulator has that right.