I read with pain how an alliance of pension and insurance lobbyists and the House of Lords are in danger of derailing several years of work by the DWP and others to get us a Pensions Schemes Act.
This from Corporate Adviser’s Chris Marchant.
Proposed government powers to mandate pension scheme investment have again been defeated in the House of Lords, as the impasse between the peers and the Labour majority in the Commons drags on.
On the evening of 22 April, the government lost a key vote on mandation in the House of Lords by 234 votes to 152, a defeat by 82 votes.
There remains a possibility that the whole Bill could fail to pass, if the Commons and Lords have not agreed on a final version before the end of the Parliamentary session next week (1 May).
Aside from mandation, the bill includes a range of other measures which have seen less opposition, such as consolidation of small pension pots, and rule changes which would allow the Pension Protection Fund to reinstate a levy if it needed to do so.
Am I alone in saying that the House of Lords, which opposes any version of the Government Reserve Powers, are unelected and by and large past working for a living.
The pension and insurance lobbyists who push for an extreme position on policies put in place by those who were elected in a General Election, may well wreck a very good bill. I believe that many who make money out of pensions want things to stay the way things are. They would be happy to see the Pension Schemes Bill be washed up because of disunity between parts of parliament.
There is a part of me that says that this Labour Government should drop mandation which would leave us as we are right now with the majority of money in defined contribution being shipped off to overseas equities (mainly American) and the majority of DB funds being groomed for insurers to ship them off to Bermuda on the slow boat of buy-out.
If the Government has not got the right to have some control over pension fund investment going forward, the electors have no control. I have said it before and it’s worth saying that a large part of my council tax goes to pay for LGPS pensions , a large part of my income tax goes to pay for tax relief and for public pensions.
Since when has the only fiduciary duty been to pensioners. Do those who manage Government pensions have some responsibility to council tax-payers and do not the income tax and corporation tax payers who pay for private pensions deserve pension funds to invest for the good of society and business?
I liked the position that Baroness Altmann took when she argued that pension funds who did not abide by the Mansion House Accord should hand back the tax relief they received. The new Baroness Altmann seems to have thrown herself behind the opposition position on mandation – which now looks like imperilling all the good reform of the Pension Schemes Bill.
I am not taking a party based stance when I ask that our Government, the one we elected and which has a substantial majority, is allowed to get on with reforming pensions.