I listened carefully to my hon. Friend and to the Chief Secretary and I did not find any difference. My hon. Friend was addressing whether particular matters should be in primary legislation; the Chief Secretary was setting out the case for the policy.
On teachers’ pensions, there was anxiety that the current arrangements, under which teachers in the independent sector can be members of the teachers’ pension scheme if their employer signs up to the scheme, might be put in jeopardy by the words of Lord Hutton’s interim report, so the Chief Secretary’s statement was welcome news to teachers. Paragraph 8 of the proposed final agreement states:
“the Government agrees to retain Fair Deal provision and extend access to public service pension schemes for transferring staff. This means that all staff whose employment is compulsorily transferred from maintained schools (including academies)…under TUPE…will…be able to retain membership of the Teachers’ Pension Scheme when transferred.”
That is welcome news. The agreement goes on to state that
“The Government’s decision on Fair deal means that…independent schools which already have access to the Teachers’ Pension Scheme
will continue to do so (for existing and new teachers); and new teachers and independent schools will continue to be able to join the scheme under the existing qualifying criteria.”
When we debated the issue in Committee, the hon. Member for Nottingham East conceded that the new fair deal
“is an improvement on the current fair deal arrangements”—
but, as he has just now, he complained that
“the promise does not appear in the Bill.”––[Official Report, Public Services Pensions Public Bill Committee, 22 November 2012; c. 458.]
He will be aware, however, that the fair deal arrangements were non-statutory when they were introduced in 1999, and that they remained non-statutory when they were revised in 2004. Notwithstanding the fact that the new fair deal arrangements are an improvement on the old ones, if it is good enough for a Labour Government for the policy to be non-statutory, it ought to be good enough for the hon. Gentleman. As my hon. Friend the Minister made clear in Committee, the recently published Government response to the fair deal consultation included draft guidance setting out how the new policy would work in practice. Given all the public statements by my hon. Friend, the Chief Secretary and by the published guidance and consultation documents, the hon. Gentleman should be assured by the commitments given.