My Lords, I will start with government Amendments 10 and 11, which would require equal numbers of employer and member representatives to be appointed to each pension board in the public service pension schemes.
The noble Lords, Lord Eatwell and Lord Sharkey, previously argued for an amendment that would have required one-third of pension board appointees to be member representatives. Their amendments essentially sought to create parity with requirements that apply to trust-based occupational pension schemes.
During Committee, I explained why simply importing those requirements was in our view inappropriate, but we accept the principle that employees should be properly represented, so, for the public schemes, we propose that there should be equal representation. That would mean that there will always be equal representation of employer and employee interests, regardless of the number of participating employers in a scheme. Given that public service pension boards will not have a role in setting the scheme regulations, there is no need to engineer a balance that favours either group.
The amendments would not prevent schemes appointing other types of board member. We anticipate that schemes will want to include scheme manager representatives, independent board members and other interests. It is of course right that other legitimate interests can be included alongside the core of employer and member representatives. We believe that our approach offers a fairer and better way to ensure that members’ interests are represented in the public schemes.
The other amendments in the group are straightforward clarifications and corrections. Amendment 9 would reinforce the appropriate reading of the Bill. As we know, there will be multiple scheme managers in the locally administered fire, police and local government pension schemes. The amendment makes it clearer that each of them shall have a pension board.
Amendments 12 and 13 are minor and technical corrections to ensure that the Bill operates as intended. Amendment 12 ensures that a scheme advisory board can be given a role in advising the scheme managers and pension boards in any public scheme that is administered by more than one scheme manager. The previous drafting inadvertently and incorrectly prevented a scheme advisory board being given such a role in the police scheme. The amendment corrects that.
Amendment 13 responds to a point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hutton, in Committee, by adjusting the provisions that prevent a person with a conflict of interest being appointed to the scheme advisory board. The change means that mere membership of either the pension scheme or a connected scheme does not constitute a conflict of interest. The amendment would mean that the conflict of interest provisions in this clause exactly mirror those already in Clause 5. I commend the amendments to the House.