My Lords, a key difference between these regulations and the main regulations being established under the Public Service Pensions Act is that these consultations cover only these technical regulations. The regs we are talking about today are not the main scheme regs. They are simply a series of regulations that enable the transition from the earlier scheme to the new scheme to go smoothly, without people being taxed twice or not taxed enough, and to make sure that, from the Government’s, the employer’s, and the individual pension holder’s point of view, things move forward in terms of their entitlement, almost as though no new schemes were being introduced. That is why I used the word technical. Perhaps I should have said that they undertook a short consultation on the draft technical regulations, which would have been clearer English. As the noble Lord pointed out, the FBU submitted responses to that consultation.
As is always the case with these types of consultations, the department did not provide an individual response; it provided a response that covered them all. As the noble Lord said, it published its formal response in the draft Explanatory Memorandum which accompanied the draft regulations. Yesterday, a committee paper was circulated to members of the Firefighters’ Pension Committee notifying them of the outcome of that technical consultation. The noble Lord is right that that committee is coming to an end, but it is being subsumed into the scheme advisory board, which will be a body on which the FBU is represented and the purpose of which is to advise the department on the operation of the new scheme going forward.