HC Deb 09 May 1973 vol 856 cc618-9
Mr. Dean

I beg to move Amendment No. 79, in page 87, line 38, at end insert: '(5A) It shall be the duty of the Board, as soon as practicable after the end of each calendar year, to make to the Secretary of State a report on the exercise of their functions in that year; and the Secretary of State shall lay a copy of the report before each House of Parliament'. This arose from a discussion in Committee on an amendment put down by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Dell), which would have required the Occupational Pensions Board to present an annual report to Parliament. This proposal I accepted on behalf of the Government, and I am now implementing the undertaking to introduce the appropriate amendment on Report. I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his suggestion.

Mr. Dell

I thank the Under-Secretary for this amendment. He will notice that I have suggested an amendment to the amendment to eliminate the sloppy words "as soon as practicable after" and to insert the decisive words "within four months from". No one can ever tell what is "as soon as practicable". It is very much better to have a time limit. A time limit is increasingly required in all sorts of legislation where reports have to be made. As the Secretary of State told us yesterday, this report will be a mine of information. We want the mine to be mined while the information is still relevant and up-to-date. I should like an assurance from the Under-Secretary on what he thinks "as soon as practicable" means. I would prefer him to accept my amendment to the amendment.

Mr. Dean

I understand the point the right hon. Gentleman has made. It is clearly desirable that the reports should be made as quickly as possible. I hope that he will accept that the board must be given sufficient time to process the statistics and to compile a sound and comprehensive report. It could be in danger of being unable to do so if it had to meet an arbitrary date line four months after the end of the period to which the reports relate. A statutory obligation of this kind seems unnecessary and could well put the board in a position in which it was not able to provide a report which was as comprehensive as necessary. I think the right hon. Gentleman will accept that he has got the principle which he laid down accepted but it would be undesirable to tie the board down in this way.

Amendment agreed to.

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