Pensions.

Part of Railways Bill – in the House of Commons at 9:45 pm on 2 November 1993.

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Photo of John Prescott John Prescott Shadow Secretary of State, Member, Labour Party National Executive Committee, Shadow Secretary of State for Employment 9:45, 2 November 1993

We shall have to continue that debate another time, but if the Minister looks at the memorandum of understanding, he will see that his appointed Government director of the trustees, whose consent will be required to the distribution of any surplus, strategic decisions on investment policy and other matters and anything to do with the guarantee of benefits granted from a surplus", will decide on the investment of the special reserve. That is not the trustees; it is the Secretary of State's appointee acting on his instruction. The trustee company is no longer an independent body.

Why does the Secretary of State appoint a director? Why does he make it clear in the memorandum of understanding that trustees no longer have freedom to make such decisions unless the Government-appointed director agrees? Presumably he will ring up the Department of Transport or the Treasury. How can he consider for a second that the. Government are not controlling the fund? I cannot believe that the Secretary of State could possibly have read the memorandum of understanding; if he did, he had a duplicitous way of doing it.

Another example comes from the Minister of State's statement in the other place on 12 October in which he said: The Government regard the memorandum of understanding as binding".—[Official Report, House of Lords, 12 October 1993; Vol. 549, c. 101.] It may be binding on the Government, but it is totally meaningless. It can mean whatever the Secretary of State wants to interpret it to mean. As the lawyers to the trustees fund said, it has no binding in contract law. It cannot be used to claim that the Government are party to a contract as signatory to the document; it cannot be treated as a contract in law. It has no meaning whatsover. It achieved what the Government wanted—it won the vote in July in the House of Lords simply by kidding them.