My Lords, there are also in this group a pair of amendments in my name and that of my noble and learned friend Lord Davidson, both of which seek to add flexibility and that famous characteristic, future-proofing, to the Bill. It is a laudable objective of the Government to have a common movement—a standard process—that can be seen as fair and generally acceptable across the entire structure of public service pensions. However, it is an objective which will, inevitably, from time to time, run up against reality. We have already seen it run up against reality in the case of the uniformed services, which we discussed earlier. It could also run up against reality in a whole series of other circumstances where the best would be the enemy of the good. In other words, the commitment to uniformity would produce elements of unfairness and, perhaps, elements of unsatisfactory performance because individuals were staying in employment longer than they ought to in some circumstances.
We need a degree of flexibility and Amendment 19 relates flexibility to a scheme-specific capability review. These reviews are now becoming quite common within public services, as they already are in private industry. They are designed in some circumstances to relate to the capabilities of individuals with respect to age. If there were to be a thorough review which a Government at the time accepted, this amendment would give the Government the flexibility to amend the pension ages set out in Clause 10(1) and (2). This would provide a degree of flexibility and that is all it is intended to do.
I questioned the noble Lord in Committee about a number of reviews that are currently under way. He pointed out to me that those reviews were not considering issues of pension age and I accept that entirely. However, this does not mean that considering pension age relative to capability will not occur or is not likely to occur. On
the contrary, it is highly likely to occur over the next 10 years or so. Amendment 19, therefore, provides the Government with the necessary flexibility to respond to scheme-specific capability reviews.
Amendment 20 would incorporate into the Bill a proposition directly taken from my noble friend Lord Hutton’s excellent report. He argued at the time that the relationship between the state pension age, which is the sort of anchor of the whole structure, and the structure of pension ages in the public sector should be reviewed from time to time. This amendment incorporates my noble friend’s proposition.
In Committee, the Minister said,
“The DWP White Paper published yesterday says that we intend to hold a review every five years, so the link will be reviewed when a review is announced”.—[Official Report, 15/1/2013; col. 621.]
He got a bit muddled there but we know what he meant. That is fine, but could he tell us what is going to happen to this DWP White Paper? Is it the forerunner of some legislation? If so, when will that legislative proposition appear? Would it not be comfortable, given the structure of this Bill, to include Amendment 20, taken from the Hutton report, to achieve the goal he declares to be the Government’s goal, as set out in that DWP document?
I entirely understand the commitment to having a standardised, clear, comprehensible system, but there will always be anomalies which have to be appropriately addressed. I believe that these two amendments provide flexibility and would ensure that the Government could do exactly that.
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