§ Sir B. Rhys Williamsasked the Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity if she will set out in full the reasons which led her to decide that it is not feasible to make transfer of pension rights a statutory requirement even between comparable schemes.
§ Mr. CrossmanAs the Prime Minister announced today in a written reply to a Question by my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesend (Mr. Murray), I have now taken over from my right hon. Friend the First Secretary of State and Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity responsibility for developing the White Paper proposals on the preservation of occupational pension rights. I have, therefore, been asked to reply to this Question.
To impose a statutory requirement of the sort envisaged by the hon. Member would involve defining what were to be regarded for this purpose as comparable schemes. Having regard to the detailed differences between even schemes similarly structured, I am not satisfied that this could be done effectively in this context; nor that a statutory scale of transfer values could be laid down which would be fair in all cases as between one scheme and another; nor that the basis on which the pension rights transferred were to be adapted to the rules of the receiving scheme could be defined with sufficient precision. As to laying down the basis of financial adjustments between the transferring and receiving scheme, it has to be recognised that in, for example, a final salary scheme, the cost to the receiving scheme would be liable to depend upon the employee's future earnings.