I do not see any incompatibility. The specific finding in Australia that independent trustees are not a magic bullet is not inconsistent with requiring schemes to ensure they are doing a good job. We will require schemes to meet quality standards that we will set out shortly.
Our call for evidence earlier this year sought views on provider-level governance structures, and the OFT has announced that the Association of British Insurers will work on independent governance committees for the big insurance-based schemes. We welcome that development and will consider our own proposals in detail in our response to the call for evidence.
The second set of governance issues relates to fiduciary duty and sustainability, addressed in new clause 12, tabled by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) and amendments 54 and 55. By happy coincidence, I took part in a conference this morning organised by ShareAction. The hon. Lady was on the attendance list—perhaps she was sitting at the back heckling, but I did not see her there. The conference was to launch ShareAction’s green light project, which aims to get
pension funds to take sustainability and climate change seriously. I was delighted to take part in that conference and I am very supportive of that agenda.
Clearly, the duty of trustees to their members is a cornerstone of trust-based governance, but we are looking at whether we have got the definition of fiduciary duty right. I welcome the fact that the Law Commission has consulted on this. Its interim conclusion is that fiduciaries should look at longer-term issues, and it is legitimate for them to look at environmental, social and governance—ESG—issues. The Government are therefore considering what the fiduciary duty on trustees means and how far we can deal with it through a better understanding of that work.
One of the issues that came out of the conference this morning—I shall try not to deviate too much from the new clauses, Mr Speaker—was that the trustee toolkit that the Pensions Regulator provides could be amended to take account of some of these concerns. One of the challenges is to try to ensure that the trustees do their job properly and have a broad understanding of what it entails. As I say, the Law Commission’s interim conclusion was that trustees should—note “should”, not just “may”—consider
“in general terms, whether their policy will be to take account of ESG factors in their decision-making”.
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I do not have any problem with the spirit of the new clause and amendments, but we are trying to consider this issue across Government. One of the funny things about being the pensions Minister is that if I go to a conference on pension funds and climate change, I have to get briefed by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills because it does fiduciary stuff, and by the Department of Energy and Climate Change because it does climate change. Rather than amend pension legislation to deal with this little bit of the picture, we are trying to take an holistic view. As the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion knows, we have had the Kay review of fiduciary duty and long-termism, and we have the Law Commission review. We are trying to be as careful and as cross-departmental as we can, so we want to look at the whole investment chain and at how corporate governance, the law of the land and pensions will be affected, to make change in an integrated and connected way.