Clause 51
Pensions Bill
1:45 pm
Danny Alexander (Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Work & Pensions; Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey, Liberal Democrat)
I will not detain the Committee long, but this is an interesting issue, and I will be interested in the Minister’s response to the questions that the hon. Member for Eastbourne has rightly posed. The deregulatory review of private pensions also looked at this issue and said:
“We believe that as a quid pro quo for the increased visibility and controversy surrounding trustee duties, all pension scheme trustees should be covered, at employer or scheme expense, by appropriate indemnity insurance or assurances from the employer and/or scheme, that would at least cover the cost of litigation so long as the trustee is not found to have acted improperly.”
I thought that subsection (5) was, essentially, trying to follow the advice that there should be some degree of indemnity. While some protections already exist for trustees who have acted in good faith, there is unease as to whether the law would continue to be interpreted as it is at the moment. There seem to be good reasons for ensuring that trustees have that degree of protection to allow them to carry out the important role that the Bill allocates to them. When drafting the Bill, did the Minister read what the independent reviewers said in the deregulatory review?