I thank your Lordships’ House for allowing me to speak. I apologise for the earlier confusion. I also apologise in particular to the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, for upsetting the rhythm of his speech. I thank him and other noble Lords for providing an introduction to Amendment 33. I must pay tribute to the campaign group ShareAction, which has done a lot of work on the amendment. I know that it has informed other noble Lords about it.
I moved the amendment in Committee. In response, the Minister pointed to the consultation on the future of trusteeship, which concluded that, due to a lack of consensus on how to address the issue, it would look at setting up, and is setting up, an industry working group to look at the diversity of pension boards. While this is welcome, we need the data to inform that work. I ask the Minister to consider incorporating this into future versions of the Bill.
A further development has happened since we last debated the Bill. There has of course been a great upswelling of frustration and understandable anger, represented by the Black Lives Matters movement. The issue of ensuring that all voices in our society are heard and have decision-making powers is particularly pressing. I urge Members of your Lordships’ House to consider it.
In response to the amendment in Committee, the Minister stressed that she wanted the pensions dashboard to focus on the provision of basic information. That is why the amendment has been amended so that it does not refer to this information being on the pensions dashboard, but rather that it would simply be reported. Information on diversity could be published elsewhere. That might be on the Pensions Regulator’s website, or as an annexe to its planned SIP repository.
Other noble Lords have referred to the level of inequality in our society and the lack of diversity. I will finish by reflecting on what the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, said, and the fact that a 2016 survey showed that on average 83% of pension boards are male and that a quarter are all male. That reflects another crucial disparity: we all know that there is a very large pay gap between men and women, but the
pensions pay gap, at 40%, is double the pay gap. These inequalities have to be tackled in our society along with levels of inequality and poverty. We have had a lot of discussions about intergenerational fairness, but we must not forget that there are already a lot of people at pension age now who really are struggling to get by in this difficult world.
I thank your Lordships’ House for the debate that we have had thus far and I look forward to further debates.