PROTECTION OF PENSION RIGHTS BILL

HC Deb 20 February 1970 vol 796 cc745-84

Order for Second Reading read.

11.8 a.m.

Miss J. M. Quennell (Petersfield)

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

I assume that hon. Members are aware of the present procedure for the approval of pension schemes under the 1952 Income Tax Act. Under that Act the schemes are, in effect, a tripartite partnership, one part being the members, that is, the employees of the sponsoring employer, and the other parts being the taxpayer and the employer. To establish a scheme the employer has to secure the approval of the Inland Revenue which must be satisfied that the scheme will be established under a bona fide trust. Thereafter, contributions to the fund are exempt for tax purposes.

While I sympathise with those who find the terminology of the Bill tiresome, my hon. Friends and I have tried to set out the Bill's intentions clearly and simply in the Explanatory Memorandum. Apart from that, I make no apologies for it. It is a radical Bill and, should it become law, its provisions will radically alter the present state of the occupational pensions movement.

Transferability of pension rights has been a commitment of all three major political parties and practically everyone has paid lip service to the need to find a solution to the problems inherent in transferability. For good or ill, the Bill offers a solution; but does more than that. There have been many instances when men have thought that their firms' schemes would provide them with a pension on retirement, only to discover their mistake too late. The Bill, should it become law, will enable those who think that their firm's scheme will cover their pension on retirement to watch its progress year by year and to judge for themselves how their savings, their rights, are protected.

Statistics in this sphere are hard to come by. In an Answer given to the House by the Minister of State just before Christmas, he said that there were 65,000 occupational pensions schemes both in the public and private sectors covering 12,200,000 people. That he said was 52½ per cent. of the working population. The Bill, therefore, covers a high proportion of our fellow countrymen and women. But the types of schemes and their viability cannot be easily assessed, because no returns for them are published at any central point.

From time to time the Government Actuary publishes a report upon them. His method is to send out a questionnaire to a sample of firms running schemes. If they all replied, I am sure that he would be delighted, but there is no obligation on them to reply. Not only do many not complete the questionnaire as requested, but the majority do not return it at all.

In 1966, the Actuary's report gave a very interesting table on page 3. It showed that 1,877 firms had been approached, but that full information had been returned only by 387. In another 454 cases, the inquiry had been inapplicable. More interesting perhaps are his observations on page 4 about the schemes. He says: The reasons for the non applicability of the inquiry were most often that the firm had ceased to exist, that its operations were wholly overseas or that its pension scheme was no longer in being. A few firms proved to be subsidiaries of other firms in the investigation and their data were duly merged. The 'limited information' obtained relates to (i) a small number of schemes for which only partial particulars were sent, (ii) some 500 schemes with very small membership … and (iii) about 250 employers who did not send data but for whom it could be deduced, from various sources of reference, that their schemes must be very small. Among the employers who did not send any data, very few appear to have immediately decided that they would not co-operate: the great majority showed willingness to assist but in the end were prevented from doing so by pressure of work and other difficulties The point here is that more firms had gone out of existence, had wound up their schemes or had otherwise escaped the Actuary's net than made the full return, and a significant point is that the Actuary did not know what had happened to those schemes He sent out a questionnaire on the assumption that they were in existence. He sends out these questionnaires every so many years and it is only then that it is discovered whether these schemes are in existence at all. He has no reason otherwise for knowing.

In his third report, in 1968, the Government Actuary stated that he had sent out a questionnaire to 2,925 firms. Of these, 1,208 did not respond. The questionnaire revealed that some 612 had disappeared for one reason or another. Only 1,105 returns were received. Those figures are in Appendix 2 of the report, and the Government Actuary observes, again on page 3: Some of the firms whose names were recorded by the Inland Revenue as having been interested in setting up a pension scheme appear not to have instituted one. Others had ceased to exist as trading concerns, had discontinued their pension schemes or could no longer be traced. The situation revealed is extremely interesting. The Inland Revenue has to approve a scheme purely for the purpose of the Income Tax Act, 1952, and for no other. This is no reflection upon or criticism of the Inland Revenue, which does its job according to Statute. But no official knows exactly what happens to a scheme's funds thereafter. Nor can the Actuary be blamed in any way. There is no obligation on firms to complete his return and in consequence his last two reports have been based on samples which were only a minority of the firms which received the questionnaire, and in that minority not all completed the returns as requested.

The situation also reveals by inference that, between publication of the two reports, firms and schemes have evaporated, in effect, by the hundred in each year. If I say that the information is scant, one must remember another factor—that a vast amount of money is involved. In Table 13 on page 15 of the 1966 report, the Government Actuary showed net savings as £560 million. This comprised £430 million from the private sector and £130 million from the public sector. By 1968, according to the table published on page 12 of his report for that year, net savings had risen to £810 million, comprising £620 million from the private sector and £190 million from the public sector. It would be a clear inference to say that the net savings figure today must be approaching the £1,000 million mark. These are the savings of millions of men and women workers.

In 1966, the National Joint Advisory Committee published a report called, "The Preservation of Pension Rights". One of its most interesting parts was an appendix summarising the positions overseas and showing how some of our neighbours provide a statutory basis for the growth and management of occupational pension schemes. Nevertheless, it would be wrong to give the impression that, in this matter, things are perfect elsewhere and wholly bad at home. It would be false, wrong and misleading.

In our thousands of schemes there are many which are superbly run. They are run not only with the participation, full engagement and active interest of their members and benficiaries, but with a level of professional investment advice which would turn the average investor pea green. Indeed, I know of one scheme which gives post-retirement benefits so that, for example, a pensioner who retired 10 years ago at £1,000 a year now gets £1,700 under the scheme. The scheme holds regular annual general meetings at which returns and reports of the trustees are considered. The members of the scheme take part in the management of the funds and if someone wants to alter the rules it cannot be done without an extraordinary general meeting at which every member can attend.

As I want to see the standard of the best schemes the standard for all, I admit that I have, where practicable, cribbed their methods and ideas for the standards we have tried to lay out in the Bill. It would be wrong, false and misleading if I gave the impression that I considered that all the schemes in this country are administered by mean and cheese-paring men, because they are not. Indeed, many of them assume burdens which they are not strictly obliged to carry. I know of a widow whose husband when he moved to his last job, said to his new employers, "I have had a lot of removal expenses. Do you mind if I join the scheme, but pay my first contribution a bit later?"

They did not mind. He had a heart attack and died, and his widow, on going through his effects, found the rule book and papers of the scheme among them. She thought that he was a member of the scheme and that she was entitled to widow's benefit under it. She does get it—and to this day she still thinks her husband had become a member of the scheme. It is to protect such flexibility that I and my hon. Friends drafted Clause 6(2) very carefully indeed.

I turn to the problems of transferability. These schemes cover an enormously wide and varied field, from the huge firms built up by large international companies with their own superannuation divisions to the very small ones covering a few members only. But across the whole movement runs a factor common to them all and which is common to each member whether in the public or the private sector. It is this. Regular saving by means of a pension scheme is the voluntary denial of present cash, to provide cash on retirement. Pensions are, after all, cash that has been earned and forgone in earlier years.

Two things flow from this. First, pensions are about cash and, second, that cash is the property of the man who saves it. It is part of his savings. Therefore, part of the assets of any fund belong morally to those who forego cash they represent. Cash is one of the easiest commodities to value. If one accepts that part of the assets of any fund has stemmed and flown from the pockets of the wage earners who made up those assets, one can secure transferability by laying down a common form by which all funds are to keep their accounts and value themselves.

Schedules 2, 3 and 4 of the Bill and Clauses 7, 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13 are designed to this end. Clause 13 is also designed to promote freer movement of labour. The wording of the 1952 Income Tax Act ties the schemes to a specific trade or undertaking and thus transferability has tended to be restrictive and where a man has been engaged in a job connected with a particular trade unless his next one is within that same trade the transferability of his rights is endangered. More than a decade ago it was recognised that in modern industrial technological circumstances it would be rare for a man to pursue the same trade all his working life. It was then thought that a man would retrain seven times in his working life. Clause 13 is designed to protect the rights of the modern wage earner in modern industry and modern circumstances. Transferability is not the only matter of importance in the Bill.

If the House thinks, as I do, that a man's savings in a fund are morally as much a part of his property as his house, car, television set, building society savings or clothes, that which he has created for himself out of his own earnings, it is intolerable that he cannot inform himself, as of right, how his property is progressing. An identical sum put by in a trustee savings bank, in the Post Office, in a unit trust or even on the Stock Exchange in company shares could be followed and observed by its owner regularly.

If my bank manager failed to send me a regular statement, I would take my account away from him. If I want to know anything about a public or private company I can go down to Companies House. If I am a shareholder in a company that company is obliged to send me annual reports and returns each year, as this House has said. What is more, this House has prescribed the form these accounts are to take.

The same is true of building societies and unit trusts and it is only in the occupational pension movement that our people's savings are hidden. That is why when recently an aircraft company went broke deficit of £52,000 was found in its superannuation funds. Some hundreds of firms disappear, as the Government Actuary's report has revealed, each year. What happens to those firms? We do not know. Nobody now knows. It is only when the Government Actuary sends firms a postcard, and when they fail to make a return, that anything comes to light at all. That cannot be right.

To give a lighthearted example, I shall take the Members' Superannuation Fund. I have contributed to that for nine years. I must have subscribed during that time something in excess of £1,000, and it may be nearer £2,000. I do not know. I have never seen any returns; I have never seen a rule book. I could perhaps ask one of the trustees, if I knew who they were, but I have not the foggiest idea. The truth is that no other part of my personal savings has vanished into thin air so completely as my contribution to the Members' Superannuation Fund. I can observe the progress of my property in every other field, but not this element of it. If my Bill becomes law, that will change.

Why should not the savings movement be publicly accountable. It is part of taxpayers' money, let us not forget. If Parliament has prescribed the form that companies and building societies and charitable trusts must publish their accounts, how can exception be taken to this provision? Clause 16 ensures that annual reports and the triennial actuarial report shall be available for inspection as well as the rules. Schedule 4 provides the form that they are to take and Clause 14 makes provision for their preparation by the trustees.

If the Bill becomes law, for the first time unions, professional associations and organisations, other employees' organisations, journalists and ordinary members will be able to judge the superannuation funds and schemes of the country. The importance for their members of those schemes cannot be overstated. Then a man deciding on which of two jobs to take will be able to compare not just the two rule books, but the growth, benefits and success of the superannuation scheme attached to each prospective job.

I do not pretend that this is an uncontroversial Bill. There are many employers who regard their schemes as a device for holding on to their employees and some of them have written to tell me so; and also to tell me to mind my own business into the bargain. There are a good many schemes, indifferently run, which would have to have the light of day thrown upon them and these will dislike and resent the extra work in preparing reports and having to meet the requirements laid upon them by the Registrar General. These are just the schemes for which the Bill is designed. Some may complain that to have to pay the Registrar General a maximum of £10 to deposit their report is monstrous. If they find that sum a burden, the sooner their accounts are examined the better.

Some may complain that transferability will be expensive, that schemes will have to make transfer payments to other schemes once transferability becomes general. But once a man has left one job and taken another, he will be replaced, and once transferability has been secured the replacement will bring a transfer voucher with him, too. The Bill will make possible that which has not been possible, a sort of free trade among schemes.

Some hon. Members may ask why an hon. Member should introduce such a Bill when the Secretary of State has his own in Standing Committee, why the Bill should use the Chief Registrar of Friendly Societies when the Secretary of State proposes to set up a registrar, why this Bill should embark upon transferability when the Secretary of State's Bill provides for preservation. Those are all valid questions.

The House must remember that the right hon. Gentleman's Bill is not yet law and that his registrar will probably not exist for some years. Moreover, that official's activities do not appear to embrace and do not appear to provide for the objectives of my Bill. Transferability as such is not tackled; only preservation, and that not fully in this century.

By the time the right hon. Gentleman's provisions become fully effective, I shall probably have died of old age. I am not concerned with the next century. I have tried my best to formulate a Bill which will make a contribution to helping the men and women workers of my own generation and those immediately before and after me. I may not succeed. I appreciate that the Bill has many defects; but, with all its defects, I nevertheless commend it to the House.

11.32 a.m.

Mr. Tom Boardman (Leicester, South-West)

I must, first, declare a personal interest in the Bill in that I am the chairman of one of the larger occupational pension schemes, although I have no beneficial interest in it. I hope that I have acquired some knowledge of the problems to which the Bill relates.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Petersfield (Miss Quennell) on the able way in which she has introduced the Bill. There was much in what she said that I could support. The intention of the Bill is right. The objective of preservation and transferability, the protection of pensions, is one which commends itself to me and I hope to all other hon. Members on both sides of the House and to responsible sections of industry.

The objective of Parliament should be to encourage occupational pension schemes, to restore the philosophy which has been so much eroded over recent years—that a man should provide for himself and his family during his working life and, also during his working life, be able to make provision for his retirement. It is a philosophy which has been much eroded in recent years. The introduction of the Welfare State, the introduction by the Government of earnings-related benefits, do something, far too much, to undermine occupational pension schemes. Elsewhere in the House hon. Members have debated the effects that the Government scheme will have on many of the good schemes now in existence.

The Minister of State, Department of Health and Social Security (Mr. David Ennals)

Is the hon. Gentleman saying that because in recent years—and presumably he means since the Labour Government came to power—we have been improving facilities for the underprivileged—and he was referring to the Welfare State and presumably to some of the services of the Supplementary Benefits Commission—we have been dealing with the problems of poverty energetically, we have, therefore, been undermining occupational pension schemes? During the last five years there has been a substantial growth in the number of those in employment who are in occupational pension schemes.

Mr. Boardman

I would be out of order if I debated the merits of the Government's Bill which is now being debated in Standing Committee. I was attempting to avoid pinpointing my criticisms on a particular period of Government or a particular provision.

I believe that the erosion of the philosophy which I mentioned, the philosophy that during his working life a man should provide for himself and his family, has continued certainly during the post-war era. I will avoid discussing the Government's Bill and keep to my main point, which is that we must do everything we can to encourage occupational pension schemes and to encourage a man during his working life to be able to set something aside for his retirement.

Mr. Ennals

I am not referring to anything in the National Superannuation and Social Insurance Bill. I am referring to the fact that at one and the same time we have seen an expansion of the Welfare State facilities and a substantial expansion, a doubling in 10 years, of the number of workers paying for their own retirement provision by means of contributions to occupational pension schemes. I do not follow the hon. Gentleman's argument.

Mr. Boardman

The feeling throughout industry, expressed many times to the hon. Gentleman, is that the introduction of the Government's Bill, if I must refer to it, and the introduction of many of the measures of the Welfare State have taken from the individual that feeling of responsibility to provide for himself. It is this philosophy and this feeling that I wish to encourage. To the extent that this Bill will provide a greater measure of security for those who, during their working lives, put aside part of their earnings for their retirement, it should have the support of the whole House.

Mr. John Ryan (Uxbridge)

The hon. Gentleman seems to be introducing a sense of dichotomy between a compassionate society which caters adequately for people who, by definition, cannot be members of occupational pension schemes, as the Government have attempted to do, and the philosophy of thrift. I do not think that there is any dichotomy and as evidence there is the growing number of occupational pension schemes and private schemes. Their number has grown enormously in the last six or seven years at the same time as adequate State provision has been made. The hon. Gentleman is arguing a nonsense.

Mr. Boardman

The hon. Gentleman has missed the point which I was trying to make, only in passing—that the more we can encourage occupational pension schemes the less it will be necessary for the State to intervene and the healthier will be our economy and society. The introduction of occupational pension schemes for men to provide for themselves will be the salvation of the type of incentive and the type of dynamic which the country needs.

Because I believe in the philosophy, I think that the factor of occupational pension schemes will become of increasing importance in the choice of jobs. Pension schemes will more and more be regarded as an important part of employment, an important factor affecting whether a man goes to firm A at one salary with a smaller pension, or firm B with a better pension, but lower current earnings. It is, therefore, right that those who opt for the job with the better occupational pension scheme, and who forgo part of their current earnings, should be secure in the knowledge that their pension will be paid when they retire.

I join issue with my hon. Friend in that part of her speech might have been interpreted to mean that many firms had, to use her words, evaporated with the trust funds. I do not think that this is the case. In the course of mergers, and so on, many small schemes have been swept into large schemes and the lack of information going to the Government Actuary may have given the impression that there have been many breaches of trust. I am not aware of any such cases having come to light. If there had been many examples of pension funds being improperly used, they would have been well publicised and we should certainly have heard about them.So, in so far as my hon. Friend's words might be interpreted to suggest breach of trust by many pension funds, I hope that she will agree that these do not exist, or that there is no evidence of them.

Miss Quenneil

Perhaps it rather depends on the interpretation of the phrase "breach of trust". Certainly, there have been instances where unpleasant things have come to light. One example—I will not mention the name—was that there was a certain newspaper in Fleet Street

Mr. Speaker

Order. Interventions must be brief. The hon. Lady has made her speech.

Mr. Boardman

I am obliged to my hon. Friend. I accept that there have been cases, including that which she mentioned, but I believe that generally the evaporation of funds to which she referred probably relates to losing trace of funds which have merged into larger funds. I am sure that she would not wish the impression to be given that there is cause for large-scale concern that the funds of beneficiary schemes have evaporated, because I believe that that is not so.

My hon. Friend rightly said that if the occupational pension scheme is to become an increasingly important part of terms of employment it must be secured and not left to the whim of the employer or left so that a man dare not change his job without the loss of the pension. This goes very much to the heart of the Bill, and is the objective which I fully support and hope will commend itself to all hon. Members.

A very high standard is set both by many of the leading pension funds and also by many of the smaller ones. It is not only the large funds that have a very good system, publish accounts and consult employees and members. The high standards set should be followed throughout industry. It is not only in the private sector that a lack of high standards, or perhaps a failure to keep books properly, has been noticeable. Only recently, in the case of the Beagle Aircraft Company, the Government did not set a good example of their action in companies where they control the share capital. I hope that their standard for looking after the pension funds there will not be followed elsewhere.

Although I support the objectives of the Bill, we should not under-rate the practical problems that will arise from its implementation. A very long time is involved in getting a pension fund established and operating in the way we would all like to see. In the Government's Bill, the time-scale is 20 years. The degree of preservation and transferability required in occupational pension schemes cannot be achieved overnight. Almost all of them are subject to a system known as controlled funding, and to switch that into a form whereby transferability and preservation can be achieved can only be done over a period. My hon. Friend will recognise that it cannot be an overnight transition.

Having praised the objectives of my hon. Friend's Bill, I hope that I shall be forgiven by my hon. Friends who have done so much work on it if I make a few criticisms. I shall not develop many of them, because they are matters which I am sure can be dealt with satisfactorily in Committee, but it is worth noting one or two parts of the Bill which call for special comment and will need some amendment.

The Bill deals only with what are known as Section 379 schemes. Many of the occupational pension schemes are Section 388 schemes, or a mixture of the two. It is said that the Government's intention is to abolish the distinction between them, but unless and until that is done and the merits or otherwise of so doing have been fully debated, any alteration in occupational pension schemes should be made to cover all those schemes—the Section 388 as well as the Section 379 schemes.

The Bill also overlooks some of the practical and human problems that face trustees. I acknowledge the intention behind the introduction of Clause 6(2) as explained so ably by my hon. Friend. It is right to give the trustees a discretion as to the choice of a beneficiary who shall benefit under the subsection, but should not they also be given a discretion to share amongst a number of beneficiaries? The provision is that the trustees could allocate the funds to a child but could not divide them amongst all the children. That can be dealt with in Committee, but perhaps the wrong impression could be given if it is not mentioned now.

I regret that there are no express provisions for augmentation of pension. My hon. Friend expressed the wish and the will that it should be possible for pensions to be augmented. There are many occasions when the bare pension under the occupational pension scheme may in special circumstances be inadequate to provide for the beneficiary or relative of a deceased, or for someone who has been struck by particularly unfortunate circumstances. There is provision in the Bill for discretionary payments, but they are not discretionary payments in the sense in which I understand that term. The provision really concerns the division of the surplus funds on an arithmetical formula.

Perhaps we might consider in Committee whether the trustees should be given a genuine discretion as to the distribution of surplus funds, not necessarily on an arithmetical formula but so that they can give specially favourable treatment to those cases where there may be a special need. I am sure that that is in accordance with the wishes of the sponsors.

The Bill requires annual valuations. I accept that it is easy enough to count the cash and add up the bank statements, but I believe that annual valuations of properties are unnecessary and impracticable, and might give misleading results. One can take an annual valuation of stocks and shares and count the cash in the building society and the bank, but many occupational funds have large property portfolios, and an annual valuation of them would cause unnecessary expense and would not produce any really helpful information. The period of valuation might well be extended.

The Bill suggests that there should be triennial actuarial valuations for the pension fund as a whole. This may be reasonable, although perhaps it is rather more frequent than may be strictly necessary to follow a trend, but other parts of the Bill require, in effect, an annual actuarial valuation for the production of a balance sheet of the fund which must show the liabilities. This can be achieved only if there is an annual actuarial valuation of the liabilities. This should be looked at again in Committee.

I rather regret the introduction in Clause 15 of the deferred annuity tables. I suggest that these are not appropriate for the purpose for which they are set out in the Bill. They ignore the funding rate of the scheme, which is the key. My hon. Friend the Member for Kensington,South(Sir B.Rhys Williams) expresses disagreement. I shall be delighted to discuss this point with him and perhaps again in Committee.

I also have reservations about the introduction of the Registrar of Friendly Societies. At present, the Inland Revenue and the Registrar of Non-Participating Employments are involved in such schemes, and I hope that we can avoid the introduction of a third body, so as to cut out as much paperwork and bureaucracy as possible in achieving the main objective of seeing that the funds are in order, and enabling members to have a fair statement of their position and to know that their pensions are secure within the limits that it is practicable to achieve. If we have too many registrars, there is a danger of too many cooks and too much expense and uncertainty.

I believe that the heart of the Bill is in the right place. Its intention commends itself to me and, I hope, to hon. Members. It will have to be subjected to major surgery to make it practical, but if the will is there, as it certainly should be, this can be achieved. If it is achieved, the interests of 12½ million occupational pensioners will be better spelt out and more secure, and this will do much to enhance the economy of the nation and the good will in industrial relations upon which we all depend.

11.50 a.m.

Mr. Sydney Bidwell (Southall)

I follow the hon. Member for Leicester, South-West (Mr. Tom Boardman) only in the sense that I agree that the heart of the Bill is in the right place. The Bill must be considered in relation to the major Government Measure which is being considered in Committee. The hon. Member for Petersfield (Miss Quennell) and the hon. Member for Kensington, South (Sir B. Rhys- Williams) are aware that I am on their side in spirit, because I joined with them in the recent all-party Motion supporting the aims of the hon. Lady's Bill. The hon. Member for Kensington, South, in his maiden speech, dealt with this matter, and I remember "pulling his leg" and saying that we were not used to revolutionary proposals from Kensington, South.

As a Socialist theoretician who has been involved in discussions about property and property rights, I draw a distinction between exploited property and personal property. I can well understand that the hon. Member for Petersfield has received admonitions from people who might otherwise be regarded as her political friends. Employers tend to look upon their employees, particularly their key workers and executives, as very much their property.

I want to free workers at all levels from their feeling of imprisonment when they are in their 40s and 50s, particularly those in the Civil Service, who feel that they cannot leave the Civil Service to take up a job outside. Enterprise is not exclusively the preserve of Tory thinking. In a libertarian society an employee must have the freedom to transfer his labour.

I have mixed feelings about giving a Second Reading to the Bill in its present form. All pension matters are enormously complicated. Employees who have been in an occupational pension scheme from the day they started employment do not understand what it means, they do not wish to know until the time comes when they can no longer go upstairs three at a time and begin to wonder what will happen to them in their old age. I do not accept the argument of the hon. Member for Leicester, South-West that there is an enormous amount of freedom. An employee usually accepts the customs of the post he occupies. After working on the railway, I spent 10 years as full-time tutor organiser for the National Council of Labour Colleges. I was the London Regional Education Officer of the T.U.C. when the T.U.C. took over the trade union aspect of this work and it fell to my lot to explain the pension arrangements and the changes that were being made.I had to explain to shop stewards' committees and the Civil Service trade unions the superannuation policy of the Conservative Government, and I remember joining in the general declaration that this was a swindle. I therefore follow this matter with keen interest—

Mr. Speaker

Order. With respect, we must come to the Bill.

Mr. Bidwell

I well understand the reason for your intervention, Mr. Speaker.

In considering pensions we must take account of the fact that the Government have courageously taken hold of the whole problem of pension entitlements. The Government's broad proposals please me because they include the concept of transferability.

An employee should be able to go from one occupation to another carrying his pension rights with him—and I agree that this cannot be done without some further legislation. One of the ways in which pensions can be made worth while for the bulk of the workers who have hitherto been excluded from them is by providing transferability. My father was in the building trade. I remember his difficulties very vividly. That is why he became a railway shop-man. It offered regularity of employment. My father had many children, and was in and out of work. He was not able to look forward to a pension. The idea of transferring pension rights is fundamental.

What rather worries me is the question of practicalities. I shall be listening with rapt attention to what my hon. Friend the Minister of State has to say later. The question arises whether it would be better to have absolute transferability. The Bill suggests the possibility of a preservation or frozen rights system. I wonder whether that is practicable. I gather that the Government's attitude is that, having gone for preservation rights, they must oppose the Bill.

I have been an opponent of the Government's prices and incomes policy because I thought that it was an impossibility to police it fairly. That doubt arises about the Bill. More civil servants will be needed—and hon. Members opposite are always complaining about the increased number of civil servants—to deal with the 65,000 existing schemes. I wonder whether it is worth the candle. Rather than to pass the Bill it might be better to amend the other Bill, which is now in Committee. I have no doubt that some Members who are on that Committee are hard at work drafting Amendments which would more comfortably express the general idea and philosophy of the hon. Lady.

I have very mixed views about the Bill, and about whether I should support it. I am rather disappointed that the benches on this side of the House are so thinly attended—although there are not many more hon. Members opposite. I assume that this is not through any lack of general interest or belief in the Measure, but rather through the comfortable feeling—apart from the fact that this is a Friday—that the Government are taking care of this matter as far as it is possible to do so.

12.3 p.m.

Mr. Tim Fortescue (Liverpool, Garston)

I join in the congratulations that have been offered to my hon. Friend the Member for Petersfield (Miss Quennell) on her courage and ability in bringing forward the Bill, and because of the hard work that she has done in the last few months on the Bill.

I should declare an interest, in that I have resigned from four pension schemes —all very good ones—and in each case I received back only my contributions, together with interest. I am now in the unhappy position of having to rely upon the House of Commons pension scheme, and if, through a strange aberration of mind, my electors decide that they no longer require my services before I have completed 10 years as a Member, I shall be without any pension. If that is an interest, I declare it.

In my opinion the Government's attitude to the Bill will be the touchstone of their sincerity on the question of the transferability of occupational pensions. In the original White Paper, published in January last year, which preceded the publication of the present National Superannuation and Social Insurance Bill which is now in Committee upstairs, the Government made clear their attitude towards the transferability of pensions. In paragraphs 152 and 153, they say: The 65,000 occupational schemes vary greatly in size, scope and method of financing, and in their detailed provisions … But, considered, collectively, they suffer from a considerable defect—there are no universal or comprehensive arrangements for safeguarding pension rights on changes of employment. Ideally, when members of occupational pension schemes change jobs, they should be given the opportunity of transferring accrued rights from one pension scheme to another—thus acquiring in the new scheme benefits equivalent to those they possessed in the old. Pension rights would accumulate and move with the individual from one employment to another, finally providing a single pension on retirement. That is in the White Paper and is, therefore, a statement of Government policy. That is what the Government would have liked to see happen a year ago. On the same page of that White Paper, the Government examine the feasibility of introducing schemes of this sort and they quote the report of the National Economic Development Council, which came to the conclusion in 1966, as the Government say in paragraph 157, that They did not believe that it was feasible to require universal transferability of pension rights. In paragraph 158, the Government examine the whole question of the possibility of transferability and conclude, in the last sentence, that While the Government hope to see a continuing spread of transfer arrangements, they have concluded that it is not at present possible to achieve universal "— I emphasise the word "universal"— transferability of occupational pension rights The Government's policy at that time was clear. They said that they would like to see compulsory and universal transferability of pension rights, but that they did not think that it could be done. I believe that that is still the idea of the Government. There has been no public expression of a change of mind. During the debates on the Bill upstairs the Government have criticised occupational pension schemes in contrast to their own proposed earning-related pension scheme on the ground that the Government scheme will provide universal transferability so that a person's pension will follow him wherever he goes, whereas it will not in the case of occupational pension schemes. That has been one of the differences between the Opposition and the Government on pension matters. It must follow that the Government's scheme will have to be bigger than any Government scheme has been up till now.

In the publication "The New Pension Scheme "—sometimes called the child's guide to the present pension scheme—issued in popular form—and a very useful document—we find, on page 25, a repetition of what the Government say in the White Paper, namely: Ideally, when members of employers' schemes change jobs, they should be given the opportunity of transferring their accrued pension rights from one pension scheme to another. There can be no doubt where the Government stand—unless we hear something different today. The Bill now before us proposes ways and means whereby transferability can be provided for some schemes—not all. The Government have said that universal transferability is not possible. The Bill does not provide a universal solution, but it does provide a partial solution, and it is a move towards an eventual universal solution.

We have a Bill which would encourage some pension schemes to make transferability possible. It has been moved in moderate terms. It has all-party support, as the hon. Member for Southall (Mr. Bidwell) has suggested, and a Motion on the Order Paper, on much the same lines, has been signed by Members of all parties. We on this side of the House think that it is a move towards putting an end to the situation in which people such as I have lost over their lifetimes accrued rights in pension funds which they believe—I believe—should be accruing to them.

The Government may say, and probably will say today, that the whole idea of universal transferability is impossible, but by the Bill they have an opportunity to take a step in the right direction. I hope that they will bestow a friendly look on the Bill, support it today, and let it go to Committee. Let it be examined carefully so that if there are any drafting faults they may be amended. I am sure that my hon. Friend will accept such Amendments at once, because this is a difficult and complicated subject; and a Bill about it, for a private Member particularly, is a very difficult Bill to draft.

Let the Bill go to Committee: let it be sorted out; let it be improved in the way that the Government would like to see it improved; and then let us have on the Statute Book the first Measure towards transferability, which is the end that all of us, I believe on both sides of the House, would like to see attained.

12.11 p.m.

Sir Brandon Rhys Williams (Kensington, South)

I shall begin my remarks by declaring an interest, in that I am a trustee of my own firm's pension scheme, but I may add that I chose not to become a beneficiary of the scheme. Perhaps I may be allowed also to add that if this Bill were to be enacted we trustees would have a great deal of work to do to bring our scheme into line with what the Bill suggests.

The background to the Bill is one of all-party agreement, and, as far as party interests are concerned, it is not a controversial Measure at all. The urgency of the matter is, I think, agreed. All parties in their last election manifestos pledged themselves to do something about this problem, and really all that is holding up progress is the technical difficulty of arriving at a satisfactory conclusion.

About a year ago I was given from the Government Front Bench an estimate of the cost to employers of giving preservation of pension rights of transferability. Speaking from memory, I recall that the cost of giving preservation would be £25 to £30 million, and of transferability possibly as much as £100 million more. The C.B.I. estimates that in private occupational schemes people changing their jobs at the moment are losing their pension rights at the rate of about £50 million a year. When we consider that in terms of £1 million a week of people's private savings being forfeited when they have committed no crime, I think that all hon. Members on both sides will agree that something needs to be done.

Therefore, I am particularly happy to join in the congratulations today to my hon. Friend the Member for Petersfield (Miss Quennell) for the extremely competent way she has tackled this difficult subject. I have had the pleasure of working with her on it, and her grasp of the subject and the originality of her approach have contributed immensely to the production of the Bill which, I believe, is very satisfactory, and worthy of further serious consideration by the House. The things in the Bill which are brilliant and incontrovertible are hers. If there are some passages in it which are perhaps somewhat pedestrian or capable of improvement, I will not deny that they are possibly mine.

My hon. Friend could have tackled the question of pension rights in one or two ways. She could have produced a very short Bill which would have been a simple statement of intent, which would not have gone into detail at all, and might have been readable and might have been convincing; but the House having given its general approval, all the work would still have remained to be done, and I fear that the Bill would not have made very much progress because of the enormous technicalities of the subject. She has, therefore, done a much braver thing. She has attempted to analyse all the problem which would actually arise in giving statutory effect to preservation or transferability or both.

My hon. Friend has provided in the Bill fearlessly the answer to every single one, and I hope that in Committee on the Bill those answers will be examined in detail. Some may be changed, as may be expected, and others may be improved, but my hon. Friend deserves the highest praise for having trodden through this minefield and come through, as I believe, intact.

The philosophy behind the Bill is that an occupational pension is a form of deferred pay. This is something which back benchers on both sides of the House have heard with pleasure in recent months confirmed from both Front Benches authoritatively. An occupational pension right is money held in trust for the employee. It cannot, therefore, properly be confiscated because an employee chooses to change his employment later in his career after the pension, or part of the pension, has been earned, and in no circumstances should an occupational pension scheme be regarded as a tip or gratuity. It certainly is not a bond tying a man to any particular employer. It must be seen as a form of personal savings.

There are certain big questions which have to be tackled as one begins to wrestle with the subject. First, should the Bill refer to future or to existing rights? Should it deal only with rights accruing after the passage of the Bill, as is suggested by the Secretary of State in his own treatment of the subject; or should it deal with all the hundreds of millions of pounds which are already held in trust for employees, of whom there are about 8 million in the private sector?

The word "retrospection" has been brought in here in a rather controversial sense. I should like to say a few words about this subject of retrospection. If the Bill were to say to employers that they must go round and search the countryside to find all their ex-employees who had been members of their occupational pension schemes, but are now working and living elsewhere, and say to them, "We are sorry that when you went away you lost your pension rights, but we are deciding now to make them good to you. So, even after all this lapse of years, we shall make you an award of a deferred payment"—if employers were to do that, that would certainly be retrospection, and if the Bill were to make them do it, it would be retrospective legislation indeed. But of course it is a fantastic concept.

But how can the word "retrospection" be applied in a case where a man is still undecided whether he will leave his employer or not? It simply is not an appropriate term. I am satisfied that if the House agrees that the money is money held in trust for the employees—and that it is their own money, although they are not entitled to take it now but only after a lapse of time and on the terms of the pension scheme—then the Bill cannot possibly be supposed to be retrospective. How can it, when it does not refer to past transactions but only to transactions which may take place in the future?

The next question is whether there should be transferability or preservation. Much has been written on the subject, some of it enlightening, and some of it, I am sorry to say, rubbish.

Quite apart from the effects of inflation, preservation gives the employee a shoddy option by comparison with transferability in a scheme on a final salary basis. Let us take a single example. Suppose a man—I am not taking account of inflation, but using examples which may be very commonplace—retires at a salary of £1,800 a year having been with the same firm all his working life, and let us suppose, as is common, that his pension scheme gives two-thirds pension for full service. His pension would be £1,200, being two-thirds of £1,800. Take another man who only joined the firm halfway through, having been earlier in his career with another firm which gave precisely similar pension terms.

Suppose that man had had an income of £1,500 halfway through his career, retiring eventually at £1,800. If he had been given preservation he would get £500 from the first scheme and £600 from the second scheme, making £1,100 in all. But, if he had had the benefit of transferability, he too, like the other man with precisely the same earnings, would have had £1,200. In this simple example there is a difference of £100 a year between preservation and transferability.

Of course, the real-life examples are not all so simple. We do have to take into account the effect of inflation. People who recommend that this House, in moving towards protection of pension rights, should go only as far as preservation and there come to rest are advocating that we should rest in a halfway house which is most unsatisfactory. I know that some people calculate that it is not unattractive for the managers of these trusts that they should retain a man's pension entitlement for perhaps 20 or 30 years after he has left employment with the sponsoring trust and that during that time they should have the tax-free capital gains on his asset plus the whole of the compound interest tax free on the asset as well; and that at the end of the day, when the man reaches the ultimate retirement age in the scheme, they would have only to pay him out in terms of the money values established on the day he left the service of the firm.

Obviously, those who ask for preservation with this in mind are not really thinking of the interests of the beneficiary. I know that the argument is adduced that many schemes use discretionary powers to augment these awards. But discretionary powers are not enough when dealing with people's money. It is just as wrong to suggest that trustees of these pension schemes should have the power of discretion as it would be to suggest that a bank should have power of discretion as to whether or not to pay out in full the money deposited with it.

The next question is: which schemes ought to be covered in a Private Member's Bill of this kind? My hon. Friend the Member for Petersfield has, extremely wisely, aimed her Bill only at the 379 schemes. She has not attempted to take in public sector schemes, which would inevitably involve the Government in considerable expense and might make her Bill very controversial. She has not attempted to deal with the 388 pension schemes. Her Bill covers only the 379 schemes and the mixed schemes and there is a particular reason why she has dealt only with these 379 schemes.

That is because we know very well that the Government are in the process of amending the relevant legislation. They have issued a consultative document with regard to the amendment of the 1952 Income Tax Act and soon 379 schemes and 388 schemes will be a thing of the past. She has, therefore, been very realistic in aiming her Bill to cover probably 90 per cent.of the private sector, including some seven million or more people.

There is, too, the big question of how to proceed to enforce upon trustees what we conceive to be the rules of good conduct. It is appropriate at this moment to draw your attention, Mr. Speaker, to the Motion 95, standing in my name and the name of my Friend the Member for Petersfield, which has attracted more than 150 names from hon. Members of all parties. The Motion says: That this House welcomes the Government's decision to grant preservation of established occupational pension rights on change of employment in the Civil Service, the Health Service and the Armed Forces; regrets that similar protection is not yet available to beneficiaries of occupational schemes outside the public service; and calls on the Government to amend the Income Tax Act 1952, so that pension schemes may in future be granted tax approval under that Act only if they permit their members to leave before retire- ment age without any loss of their funded entitlements. I have two things to say about this. First, I believe that the Motion contains the germ of the best method of enforcing what the House requires upon the trustees, that is to say, by withdrawal of the tax concessions to trustees who do not choose to obey the rules. It would be outside the rules of order for my hon. Friend to incorporate this particular recommendation in her Bill and so, under Section 18, she has made what I hope hon. Members will regard as a reasonably acceptable alternative for the purpose of a Private Member's Bill.

The other point about the Motion is that it refers to the funded entitlements and not to the much larger item, which might have been frightening to employers: it does not refer to the whole of the accrued rights. Funds, therefore, which are not fully funded need not feel that they must either hasten to wind up before the passing of the Bill or else face immediate and very heavy demands to bring their funding completely up to date. The Motion refers to "funded entitlements ",.which might be equated with the secured rights only, and it does not deal with the accrued rights.

My view is that if employers choose to defy the general feeling of the House on the subject of the way in which these pension schemes should be run they should be free to do so; but they should not also take advantage of the tax concessions which have an obvious social purpose. If they want to run their schemes in an arbitrary or paternalistic manner it is up to them to attract employees willing to work for them under those conditions if they can. But the House should not give its blessing to such schemes by giving extremely valuable tax concessions as well.

Another difficulty which my hon. Friend has tackled is whether employees' own contributions should be repaid. She has done what I consider to be wise, which is not to raise this particular problem in the Bill. There are ways in which this could be tackled—possibly by extending to all those schemes which mainly depend upon payment of annuities, the option for the beneficiaries to take lump sums which has long been established practice in the Civil Service scheme.

We could bring into all private occupational schemes a new element—the lump sum option element—which could be an easy way round this question of the repayment of employees' contributions. We might say: You may not take out your own contributions but you may at this stage draw your lump sum entitlement instead. In many schemes that would amount to the same thing. We ought, in any event, to look at the special tax concessions which have become out of date in regard to repayments of employees' contributions.

I would not object if the Government suggested that the contributions paid should be aggregated with the income of the employee in the year in which he chose to draw those out. The absurd formula whereby he pays 33 three hundred and fifty-thirds in tax on the amount he receives in repayment of his own contributions, is obviously out of date. My hon. Friend has chosen not to go into this corner of the minefield and I commend her for that. My personal inclination is to say that Parliament should not attempt to reduce the discretion of the individual in the disposal of his own property. A man's contributions in his pension scheme are a form of savings and I would not welcome any serious interference with his right to take them out, wise or unwise as he may be in doing so.

There are three objects of the Bill which will become obvious to anyone studying it closely. I hope that the Bill's critics will study it closely, because one or two comments have been made already which are in fact answered in the Bill, if people would read the small print. The Bill makes possible much closer supervision of the way in which these trusts operate. The Inland Revenue supervises these schemes at the moment: that is how they come to be designated 379 schemes—they have been approved under Section 379 by the Inland Revenue.

The Revenue would be the first to admit that its object is to protect the Revenue rather than the beneficiary. With marvellous ingenuity and very great capacity the officials of the Revenue investigate these schemes with a view to ensuring that there is no tax avoidance measure or stunt incorporated in offbeat schemes which simply take advantage of Parliament's goodwill.

I do not object to the Revenue doing that, but it leaves a gap, because the beneficiaries do not have the protection that they should have. Therefore, my hon. Friend suggests that we go back to the pre-war practice in that occupational pension schemes should come under the Registrar of Friendly Societies. I cannot think of a better person and I am sure that that long established office, the Registry of Friendly Societies, is the right place for these schemes to be registered.

But with the best will in the world the Registrar cannot be expected to know everything going on in the management of 65,000 schemes. We hope that in due course there will be many more. It is proper that these schemes should be obliged to publish their annual returns to make known the nature of their investments, the extent of their commitments and, perhaps the crux of the whole Bill, the level of funding of the schemes. The hon. Lady suggests that the actuarial reports should be put on a triennial basis. With all the changes taking place as a result of takeovers, amalgamations and that sort of thing, three years is not too frequent.

The Bill specifies that the actuarial report must pay particular attention to the extent of future commitments and not merely to the way in which accrued rights have been covered. The hon. Lady suggests that there should be a trustee, or, in a larger scheme, two trustees elected by the members themselves. This, I think, would be particularly popular among hon. Members opposite and it is an extremely reasonable concept. It would add to the degree of participation which the members could feel they have in the way the schemes are run. After all, they are run on the members' behalf, not that of the employers. Once an employer has put money into the scheme he has no further interest in it.

I was reminded in Committee yesterday by an hon. Member opposite that in the original legislation on occupational schemes it was stated that in no circumstances could a sponsor ever receive a repayment from the scheme. That could well be enshrined in our legislation again. The Bill also suggests elementary model rules which I think should not give offence, although I have been surprised by the criticism which has been attracted to these model rules from some quarters. The trustees should surely be willing to keep proper accounts and records and to keep their members informed of what they are doing.

The next major objective of the Bill is to ensure once and for all the independence of the trustees. It limits the number of trustees who at the same time may be employees of the sponsor. Particularly at times when a firm comes under threat of a takeover, divided loyalties can cause difficulties when a trustee of the fund is also a full-time employee and perhaps even a director of the firm. By introducing the idea that trustees must be independent, this particular dilemma can be avoided. The Bill also Emits the degree of selfinvestment—which is a possibility sometimes seriously abused—to a maximum of 1 per cent. And it requires an independent audit every year.

The most controversial and difficult element in the Bill is where it deals with valuation. If we have not established an accurate method of valuation, we cannot have transferability or even preservation on fair terms. The Bill recognises that it is possible for many different views to be taken both of the value of an individual member's rights in a scheme, even in schemes with the most elementary provisions; and that the total commitments of the trustees are also extremely difficult to assess.

It therefore attempts to minimise the areas where trustees are able to exercise wide discretion, because with the exercise of discretion, accurate valuation becomes virtually impossible. It attempts to divide those elements in the member's entitlement which are capable of an arithmetical calculation from those elements which inevitably are a matter of estimation; and in regard to matters requiring estimation it provides for arbitration so that the parties concerned can ensure that a single decision eventually emerges.

Reference was made this morning by my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, South-West (Mr. Tom Boardman) to the table of deferred annuities. This is a point of reference by which the current rate of interest can be employed in a way which is not con- troversial to establish precisely what a basic deferred annuity without frills may be deemed to be worth at any time. Even on a matter as elementary as that I suppose it is possible for there to arise some controversy. But it is better that there should be 95 per cent. accuracy than no agreement at all.

Schedule 3(2) allows for schemes which do not just give deferred annuities and nothing else. It provides that in the case of schemes which provide contingent benefits in addition to retirement annuities, due allowance shall be made for the value to the beneficiary of such contingent benefits. There may be argument over what "due allowance" is to be, but I believe that in time, perhaps in a short time, the actuarial profession, which in this country is second to none in its expertise and professional standards, will be able to find agreed solutions in the majority of cases. I know people say that in the 65,000 schemes one has 65,000 varieties of provision; but when we examine a large number of these schemes—as I have done—we find the same elements being incorporated again and again, and one soon learns to recognise features which are common to very many of them.

Objections have been voiced to the Bill. I hope that these may be dealt with in Committee rather than by my taking up more time of the House today. One serious objection, however, is that the Government's National Superannuation and Social Insurance Bill already attempts to tackle this problem in certain measure. I do not want to speak in any party or captious spirit, so I will choose my words carefully. That Bill deals only with future accruing rights under occupational schemes. Whatever may be decided about abatement and amendment of those schemes, there will still be millions of people entitled to hundreds of millions of pounds in trust schemes. It is only right that they should be given a measure of protection in accordance with the wishes of the House.

The Secretary of State has said that he is willing to consider amendment of the Government's Bill if hon. Members feel that Clause 109 of that Bill does no go far enough. I believe that some Amendments have already been tabled and that it is likely that more will be tabled to that Clause. But I am sure that it would be of great value for the House to appoint a Committee specifically to look into this Bill, which deals with matters which are outside the provisions of the National Superannuation and Social Insurance Bill as it stands.

Another objection is that this Bill will cost employers too much. People who have said that have simply not read the Bill because it does not deal—any more than did the Motion to which I have referred—with the whole of the accrued rights. It deals only with those rights which have been already secured by payment of cash into the trust. So we are asking only for money already in the money box to be divided among the beneficiaries on fair terms, so that none of them would be deprived of their rights. It is the level of funding of the scheme which would determine the transfer payment, or the extent of the deferment award, under the provisions of the Bill.

There have also been objections on the ground that the Bill is likely to cause too much work. But I do not think that the trustees of schemes who are not prepared to keep proper records, to make valuations, to keep minutes and the names and addresses of their members should have the benefit of the tax concessions given by society. Those tax concessions are worth so much that some sort of discipline should be enforced on the trustees. Schemes which cannot cope with the paperwork required should perhaps contemplate winding up. I do not think that anything in the Bill will discourage the growth of the occupational pension movement. If people say that it will they should produce evidence to prove it, and not use it as a threat.

It has been said that the Bill requires too much disclosure. I do not think that this is so. I do not think it wrong that schemes should be registered with the Registrar of Friendly Societies. That was a commonplace and accepted condition before the war. The fact that schemes contracted out of the existing State scheme are obliged to register with the Registrar of Non-Participating Employments has caused no friction and this suggests that the principle is well established.

These are people who will object to the Bill because they dislike the principles which it embodies. They will find that they have very few friends on either side of this House. They reflect that there are £130 million worth of reasons every year why the present situation should continue, but, to me, it appears that there are £133 million worth of reasons why something should be done at once. I do not accept that the setting up of an occupational pension fund is not really the formation of a trust, but just an aspect of personnel policy. The money put into the hands of these trusts is money in trust indeed. The fact that many people are not benefitting from that money later in their lives is a crying scandal which the House should deal with urgently. I hope, therefore, that it will be the view of the Minister and of all other hon. Members that the House should give the Bill a Second Reading.

12.40 p.m.

Mr. William Hamilton (Fife, West)

I cannot claim to compete with the hon. Member for Kensington, South (Sir B. Rhys Williams) in expertise on these matters. However, I must confess that I signed his all-party Motion, which is not a very usual exercise for me. I did so because I felt that he was trying, as this Bill is trying, to deal with a very real problem. It is one which was not tackled by his own Government. However, I hope that it will be tackled by the present Government. Today's exercise will be useful if for no other reason than that it will help concentrate the Government's attention on a problem which, quite properly, is exercising the minds of millions of worthy citizens.

I applaud the hon. Member for Petersfield (Miss Quennell) not only for the content of her speech, but for the motives which inspired it. There have been occasions when I have accused her party of a good deal of humbug in these matters. Today, it is rather less so. There is a real problem to be dealt with here, and the Government will be well advised to listen carefully to the representations being made from both sides of the House as to how to tackle it.

As I said at the outset, I have no great expertise on these matters, and I sought a lay version of what the hon. Lady was seeking to achieve in her Bill. I suspect that she did not draft it—[HON.MEMBERS: "Yes, she did."]. Then the hon. Lady goes up in my estimation if she did. In any event, I have no objection to an hon. Member seeking outside assistance when drafting a Private Member's Bill. One of the big disadvantages under which private Members labour is the lack of expertise in drafting Bills and formulating their own proposals. I find it quite impossible to put my own ideas into parliamentary jargon. Perhaps that is my fault. It may be the fault of my ideas and not of the people who prepare the jargon. But I doubt whether there are many hon. Members on the back benches who could prepare a Bill of this complexity quite unaided. Certainly, I could not.

In my view, there are some problems which are incapable of solution by means of a Private Member's Bill. I think that we all accept that. There are problems which are so involved and require so much negotiation with outside bodies and advice and guidance from experts of one kind or another that it is impossible for a private Member seriously to tackle them. That applies more especially to the present case when there is a Government Bill upstairs in Committee which seeks to deal with the very problems exercising the minds of hon. Members on both sides of the House this morning.

Even assuming that the hon. Lady's Bill were given a Second Reading today, it would be absurd for the House to have two Committees at the same time, one with a Government Bill dealing with national superannuation and its related problems and, in the next room, a Private Member's Bill seeking to deal with one aspect of the same problems, with the same Ministers gyrating between two rooms in an attempt to handle both Bills. That would be a ridiculous position into which the House would be chary of putting itself.

Our postbags emphasise the importance of private occupational schemes and the loss of pension rights which might be involved in the changing of jobs. The hon. Lady made a point of this. In this technological age, a man can reasonably be expected to change his job several times in the course of his working life. The hon. Lady suggested five times. It may be less. In a working lifespan of 50 years, it would not be unreasonable to expect a man to change his job four, five, or even six times.

The hon. Lady referred in a slightly humorous way to our own Members' Superannuation Fund. I feel somewhat the same about it. But it is our own fault. If we want more details about where our money goes, what happens to it, and how much we have paid into it, it is up to us to find out. I do not criticise the scheme. I criticise myself if I do not have the information which I need. The same applies to individual employees and their trade unions. This is deferred income, and trade unions should ensure that employees have the right to know exactly what there is in a scheme at any time. There should be an annual statement to each individual employee so that he can know what he is entitled to at any time.

The House will recall that this problem exercised the mind of the previous Conservative Government to the extent that they initiated an investigation by the then Ministry of Labour's National Insurance Advisory Committee. As I understand, in their current legislation, now in Committee, the present Government are working on the conclusions of that committee and seeking a solution to the problem in their legislation.

In statistical terms, about half of our working population are in occupational pension schemes of varying quality. It should not be assumed that to be in an occupational scheme is satisfactory in itself. There are some schemes which are not worth the paper on which they are written. The miners' scheme is a good example. I need not go into the details of it, but any hon. Member who represents a mining community knows that the miners originally were very badly led into believing that they could get a good pension without paying a good contribution. That cannot be done. If anyone wants a good occupational scheme with a good pension, he must be prepared to pay a good contribution.

The miners were led to believe that they could get the pension without the contribution, with the result that they got a basic retirement pension of £1 a week. Recently, that has gone up to 30s. I know coal miners who have worked 50 years in the mining industry, some of them from 12 years of age right up to 65, 70 and 75, and who find that they have 30s. Even when they got the extra 10s., it was taken off their supplementary and they were back to where they started.

Let us not pretend that people in occupational schemes would be other than pleased if their pension schemes were got rid of altogether, so long as the Government made adequate alternative provision.

I agree with the hon. Lady that the worker has the right to regard his pension scheme as deferred pay. This is part of the trade union agreement. The sad thing is that, in so many schemes, if the worker leaves before retirement he gets nothing. This applies to more than a quarter of the 12 million now in occupational schemes. They simply lose their rights. Another 4 million—I am using round figures; it may be more or less—get only their own contributions back. The employer's contribution is not given to them, although it is presumably part of the deferred pay. That is lost to the worker. That means that only about two out of every five have a continuing entitlement to the benefits that they have been earning within a particular scheme.

The Bill seeks to ensure that all should have the right to a transfer payment. I was interested when the hon. Lady said that she had had employers writing to her telling her to mind her own business. It is usually we on this side who get that kind of letter from employers, the C.B.I., about interference by the Government. But the hon. Lady said that they will not only interfere, but will also fine the trustees if they do not behave. This is a remarkable transformation for the Opposition, but none the less welcome.

Miss Quennell

I warned the House that this was a radical Bill.

Mr. Hamilton

I am sure that the hon. Lady's aims are radical. I approve of that. But I am not sure how it would work and whether it would be more satisfactory than the Government's proposals upstairs.

I said, or implied, at the outset that the hon. Ladys' best course would be—I do not know whether she is a member of the Committee—to talk to her hon. Friends upstairs in the same language as she has used in the House and get them to talk to the Minister in Committee in the same language and seek to persuade the Government to accept Amendments to the Government's Bill. This is the line on which the hon. Lady should be working. If her hon. Friends can get the principles of this Bill incorported into the Government's Bill, and can convince the Government that their proposals are better, there will be no need for this Bill. All their proposals would be incorporated in the Government's Measure, and they can take the credit. Or, if the Government are not satisfied with that, the Opposition can incorporate these proposals in their election manifesto and tell the employers, "We will interfere with your superannuation scheme. We will fine the trustees if they do not toe the line."

I wonder what the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) would say about that. I wonder whether he would campaign along those lines in Wolverhampton. Indeed, I wonder whether the Leader of the Opposition would. I am not so sure that the hon. Lady has the agreement of her own Front Bench on this. It may be a recommendation if she has not. However, I will leave that aside.

I understand that the Government's proposals on this matter are embodied in Clause 109 of the Bill upstairs. I am not exactly au fait with what is happening there, but I have looked at the Bill and I understand that those proposals are in that Clause. I need not go into those proposals in detail—

Mr. Speaker

Order. The hon. Gentleman not only need not, but must not.

Mr. Hamilton

I fully understand the position, Mr. Speaker. I was getting ready to sit down.

The basic objective of the Government's proposals is to keep administrative procedures as simple as possible. This is one problem that the House must face in this matter. It is extremely difficult to temper equity with simplicity. The occupational schemes are of such an infinite variety that to try to frame statutory rules and regulations that are both equitable and simple is virtually impossible. So the Government have laid down certain conditions on the number of years, age, and the like which are not in this Bill. I think that the Government's proposals are reasonably fair on that account and that the hon. Lady's are not.

It should be recognised—I think that the hon. Lady might recognise it—that transferability of rights by law just is not on. We cannot lay down rules for the reasons that I have given. Occupational schemes are much too diverse to lay down a generality of rules and regulations.

Sir B. Rhys Williams

I am following the hon. Gentleman with great interest. Would he agree that the diversity of the schemes is not important as long as we can reduce the entitlement of the beneficiary to a cash sum in every case? If we have a precise method of valuation which is applicable to every scheme—and this is what the Bill provides—so that the transfer payment is expressed in cash, the fact that the schemes may not be the same is irrelevant.

Mr. Hamilton

The Minister will reply to that in greater detail than I possibly can. If I understand the hon. Gentleman's question, it would mean enormous administrative bureaucracy.

Sir B. Rhys Williams

No.

Mr. Hamilton

I will leave that to the Minister. That is my immediate reaction. To examine each scheme will involve valuation problems and experts of all kinds to assess their financial viability. Frankly, that prospect appals me, and I am sure that it will appal the people who will be called in to do the work.

I do not pretend to be an expert, but the Bill does not seem to give adequate protection to occupational pension rights. It certainly interferes with the provisions of those schemes to a greater extent than the Government's proposals and must impose a heavier administrative burden on them. I believe that the Government are aware of that problem —the Advisory Committee was presumably aware of it—and their proposals attempt to avoid these pitfalls and imponderables. I understand that in the Government's Bill the crucial consideration is the rate of pension accrual having regard to contributions and length of service, not the state of a scheme's fund.

It might be argued that the hon. Lady's Bill is more generous than the Government's proposals with no qualifying age, as there is in the Bill upstairs. It covers all service, but that has to be weighed against the disadvantages that I have mentioned.

Further, it is clear that those people in funded schemes are the ones who will benefit primarily from the Bill, but these are the very schemes which probably give adequate preservation already and would probably give retrospective preservation in future voluntarily without recourse to statutory obligations.

The other matter is the question of what the Government have called dynamism. Paragraph 8 of Schedule 3 presumes to give some kind of dynamism, but it seems to me that this is more apparent than real, because the preserved award depends, first, on the rules of the scheme, and, second, on the level of its funding. Moreover, the conservation of accrued benefits into a capital sum is to be by means of the deferred annuity tables, to which reference has been made. As I understand, these tables assume that the capital will accumulate interest until the age of retirement, that is, they will allow for accrual and scale down the capital sum accordingly, so that the Bill provides simply that the interest is to be taken out, and then to be put back again.

There is no element of dynamism in that, and I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will be able to explain this so that not just the hon. Member for Kensington South (Sir B. Rhys Williams), but I, can understand it. If the element of dynamism in the Bill is real, that will give more conviction to my support for the Bill.

For reasons which have been mentioned, the Bill applies only to schemes approved under Section 379 of the 1952 Income Tax Act. This means that more than 10 per cent. of those in occupational schemes will be left out. This will be hard on them, and hon. Gentlemen opposite had better think about that if they want the Bill to be comprehensive. The Government's proposals are comprehensive, and they seek to cover everyone in occupational schemes.

I am bound to put in one or two small party barbs. The Bill, which is being put forward by hon. Gentlemen who often talk about the increase in the number of civil servants and bureaucrats, is extremely extravagant in its distribution of various functions and responsibilities among all kinds of people—the Inland Revenue, the Government Actuary, the Chief Registrar of Friendly Societies—

Mr. Albert Booth (Barrow-in-Furness)

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I wish to draw attention to the fact that 40 Members are not present in the Chamber.

Notice taken that 40 Members were not present—

Miss Quennell

(seated and covered): On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is it in order for an hon. Member to count out the House on a Friday when we are debating a Private Member's Bill which affects a large proportion of the population?

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Sydney Irving)

That is not a point of order. The Chair is following the rule.

Miss Quennell

Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. This is denying the Minister an opportunity to reply to the arguments which have been advanced during the debate.

Mr. Deputy Speaker

Four minutes having elapsed, I must, under the Standing Order, proceed to count the House.

House counted, and, 40 Members not being present, adjourned at eight minutes past One o'clock, without Question put, till Monday next.