My Lords, I, too, thank the Minister for her introduction and for returning to her usual helpful mode on this occasion, unlike during questions the other day. I hope that it does not do her any harm with her Whips, but we are very grateful to her.
I want to speak in support of Amendment 33, which has not yet been moved, although I hope that we will hear later from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. I nearly said “Barnard Castle” but that is a more notorious place.
Diversity, whether based on ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, socioeconomic background or disability, continues to be a key issue facing our society today. Indeed, diversity is still lacking across many FTSE companies in key sectors such as engineering, science, technology and banking, not to mention in this House and the other place.
In the pensions sector, many pension fund trustees and the top levels of executive teams also lack diversity. Some progress has been made. Nevertheless, data from the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association indicates that, overwhelmingly, private sector pension fund trustees are male. The Pensions Regulator also found that about half of the chairs and a third of the trustees are over 60 years old. With no disrespect to my noble friend Lord Naseby—whom I must be nice to as he is doing a good job on the board of the Parliamentary Contributory Pension Fund, in which I must declare an interest—I think that this is a bit of an imbalance.
Of course I am concerned. In other areas, older people are discriminated against on grounds of age, but in this instance it is younger people who are underrepresented on boards, which make decisions of importance to them as well. With the introduction of auto-enrolment, which has brought about more and more young savers, as well as a greater focus on those in society who are “under-pensioned”, such as women and ethnic minorities, it is important that trustees managing the increasingly diverse pension profile also become increasingly diverse to reflect these savers. Requiring pension schemes to provide information on the diversity of the boards helps to provide some form of greater transparency and opportunities for the better governance of pension schemes.
To add to that, I believe that, although reporting on diversity is important, it may be of equal, if not greater, importance for schemes to be required to provide plans on how they hope to achieve better diversity on their boards of trustees. I hope that the Minister will continue in the helpful manner with which she started and that she will give the House, and me, some encouragement in this direction in her reply.