My Lords, I support my noble friend’s amendment and will speak to my Amendment 78, which is grouped here. I fully agree with her that it is important to protect members’ pensions on transfer, whether they come from one type of scheme or another. I am delighted to see the government amendment and its intent.
My amendment would do something that I have sought for a time, and I wondered whether we might be able to get it into the Bill. It relates to partners of pension scheme members who transfer their pension from one scheme to another. One hears so often of a
divorced couple where the wife has no pension of her own and has sometimes even had a pension-sharing order. However, when the member’s pension is transferred as a cash-equivalent transfer value, there is currently no mechanism to ensure that the spouse, who clearly has an interest in potentially half that amount, is made aware that that is happening. Of course, once the money has been transferred, should the previous partner have ill intent, it is possible that the spouse—usually the wife—will be left pensionless when in fact she had expected to share the partner’s pension.
This is a probing amendment. I support my noble friend’s amendments and would be grateful to hear whether any other Members of the Committee are interested in this type of protection, which we might be able to request be inserted in the Bill, so that if somebody calls up to transfer their pension, some procedure is in place before that is done to ensure that anyone else with an interest in the pension has given their consent or has at least been informed, which does not always happen.
7 pm