Examination of witnesses (Question 1 -
19)
WEDNESDAY 24 JUNE 1998
MR JOHN
DENHAM, MP,
MR CHRISTOPHER
EVANS and MR
WILLIAM ARNOLD
Chairman
1. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. May
I open the public evidence session this morning by welcoming the
Minister. May I say that we are grateful that we have had the
help of the Department as a Committee in what is really quite
a novel, if not historic, occasion in terms of the Government
of the day inviting comment on a Bill in a pre-legislative stage.
Now that we have had access to some of the policy experts working
in the field from various Departments the first thing that struck
me was the extent of the complexity inter-departmentally on what
has to be sorted out, indeed between different legal jurisdictions
north and south of the border. We are being taken behind the curtain
of secrecy if you like of the process of government perhaps for
the first time and I think in a very important and historic way.
I think it is obvious to anybody who spends any time looking at
the subject that it is very technical and we are grateful, Minister,
that you have brought Mr Christopher Evans and Mr William Arnold
with you this morning because they will help interpret some of
the algebra and some of the acronyms in some of these systems.
Maybe, Minister, you could just say a few words about where you
are in the process and what Mr Evans and Mr Arnold are particularly
responsible for and then we can go into some of the questions.
We perfectly well understand that you may have to refer to and
draw quite heavily on the technical assistance you have on your
left and right hand sides. We understand that because we are in
the same difficulty ourselves.
(Mr Denham) Thank you very much indeed, Chairman.
Perhaps I could say a few opening words, one set about the principle
and one about the process that we are involved in today. On the
principle of what we are trying to achieve, pension sharing is
first about fairness. It is about ensuring that divorcing wives
in particular can get a fair share of the pension which has accrued
in the husband's name. Pension sharing will also contribute to
one of the wider aims of the Government's pensions review, which
is to narrow the gap between men and women in retirement. It is
harder for women to build up a decent pension in their own right,
often because of their caring responsibilities and the patterns
of work that they enjoy. For many married women it is their caring
and domestic responsibilities that have enabled their husbands
to work and therefore to build up a decent pension. If they divorce
women can be left without the pension provision which they have
contributed to for their retirement. Pension sharing will enable
courts to give a divorcing wife a fair share of the pension rights
that have accrued in the husband's name. Pension sharing would
apply equally of course to men and women but the current distribution
of pension rights does mean that the main beneficiaries will be
women. I recognise, as you do, Chairman, that the hearing today
represents a new development in the parliamentary process. The
Select Committee on Modernisation of the House of Commons recommended
more pre-legislative scrutiny of Bills by Select Committees to
ensure better legislation and to make better use of the time in
Parliament. The inquiry that your Committee is undertaking on
pension sharing is pioneering that proposal and I am very pleased
to be here at the public evidence gathering stage of its work.
I certainly believe that your Committee can add value to the process
through constructive pre-legislative scrutiny. We have set out
several basic policy principles in the consultative material but,
as you recognise, pension sharing is immensely technical. It cuts
across pensions, tax and family law. In developing the detailed
policy and procedures we have often had to reach finely balanced
judgements between different options. I hope that the judgements
that we have made will deliver workable arrangements, but the
point of this exercise to us and the wider public consultation
is to test that out. Whilst today I will endeavour to explain
why the draft legislation has set out particular approaches, I
actually welcome very much the opportunity to discuss these approaches
with the Committee and to take note of the concerns that are raised
today and later of your conclusions. I know you will be hearing
from other groups over the coming months and as a result of what
you hear from them and the judgements you make I am certainly
open to ideas on better ways of achieving the objectives that
we have set out.
2. Thank you very much. Can I start by asking
a very general question. Is there any substantive difference between
the approach that we are taking now and the approach of the previous
administration who went through a Green Paper, White Paper process?
Is there anything there that is worth pointing to by way of changes
in the emphasis or redirecting the policy in any meaningful way,
or is it possible to rely on the consultative processes in the
last Parliament as a continually evolving part of a single process?
(Mr Denham) Certainly I think that a few years
ago the issue of pension sharing on divorce was a matter of major
party political division, particularly in the House of Commons.
That argument of principle I think was resolved some time ago
now in the last Parliament when the principle of pension sharing
on divorce was accepted by the previous administration. They published
a Green Paper and then a White Paper and when we were elected
with a commitment to implement pension sharing on divorce our
approach was to build on the work that in the latter stages of
the last administration was being done, so we saw no reason to
go back and re-issue a new Green Paper or a new White Paper. It
is quite difficult for me to know whether on the more detailed
points of judgement that we have had to make in preparing the
draft legislation a different administration would have made different
choices. I think it is fair to say that what you have in front
of you does build on the agreement that was finally reached in
the last Parliament, that we should proceed on pension sharing.
3. Presumably we are right in assuming that
it does actually play a part in the wider programme of reform
for pensions. You get the whole stakeholder arguments, you get
the educational process; all these things are important. Presumably
you see this, although it is a free standing and technical issue
in its own right, as also part of a more comprehensive pensions
provision package across the wider spectrum.
(Mr Denham) What I think the pension sharing does
is first to introduce fairness on pension rights into the process
of divorce and that would be important in its own right as a free
standing measure. But it does tie in very much with the challenges
and objectives that we have set out in the pensions review. We
are concerned about widening inequality in pension incomes and
about the wide gap that exists between the incomes of men and
women in retirement. We will be addressing those in the pensions
review in a variety of different ways: better forms of second
tier provision, looking at the position of carers who are unable
to build up decent pension rights and who are most often women.
There will be a wider process of reform as a result of the pensions
review. The outcome that we can expect from pension sharing in
divorce will complement those same aims and objectives.
Mr Wicks
4. Can I ask you more about the key objectives
of this reform because you have very much presented it in terms
of a pensions objective and splitting the pension fairly where
there is divorce. Indeed, the Secretary of State in her foreword
to the consultation paper talks about helping to narrow the pensions
gap between men and women in retirement. We understand the pensions
objective, certainly from you as Minister for pensions, but is
there a possible confusion or conflict with the basis of this
proposal in terms of family law where, as I understand it, the
courts' objective is very much to look at assets and how they
should be fairly distributed? Might there not be a situation,
given that discretion still remains very much with the court,
that because the pension funds are just being treated as other
assets alongside furniture or the family home the court could
well decide quite often that the deal really is that the wife
or ex-wife gets the family home because the children are there,
and he keeps the pension fund. In other words, I am just putting
it to you that there may be a conflict between family law objectives
and pension objectives.
(Mr Denham) I do not believe that there is a conflict
although I recognise the potential for confusion. I hope one of
the effects of the consultation process will be to make clear
what is proposed. The starting point of the problem in terms of
family law and divorce is that the lack of the type of legislation
we are now discussing made it impossible for pension rights to
be taken fully and properly into account in the divorce settlement
because you did not have a mechanism for splitting the accrued
rights in the way it is proposed. A key result of that was unfairness
to many women who were denied effective access to pension rights
which they had helped to build up. By introducing pension sharing
into the family law process we will make it easier for a complete
and fair settlement of the assets of a marriage to be determined
when a divorce takes place. The practical consequence of that
will be to enhance the security in retirement and the pension
rights of women (as it generally is) who would otherwise lose
out through that process. In other words, family law was acting
to deny women a fair share of the rights which had built up during
marriage as part of the marriage settlement. By introducing these
changes we hope that women will gain access to a fair share of
those assets. What we have not done, to make this point clear,
is to try to suggest that family law should exclude consideration
of pensions in the settlement that takes place at a divorce and
to deal with the pension rights as an entirely separate matter
irrespective of what happens to the other properties. We are effectively
including pension rights within that process where they are not
adequately included within the process at the moment. We have
not sought to separate them out as an entirely separate matter.
5. Can I press you on this because it is
a complex interface if you like between family law and the practice
of family law and what we are trying to achieve in terms of pensions.
I would have thought what we were trying to achieve in pensions
was that, with four out of 10 marriages ending in divorce (or
whatever it is), when those parties retire both have a reasonable
chance of having a decent income in old age. That would be the
pension objective. In the consultation paper, part 1 of it, paragraph
12 on page 15, it talks about stage 4 of the process. It is the
financial settlement on divorce. If you look at paragraph 13 it
does say: "Whether the settlement involves a pension share
will depend on the individual circumstances of the divorcing couple
and what is fairest in the division of total assets between them."
It goes on: "This also means that any settlement will not
necessarily divide the pension rights equally between the parties."
This is the point and it is acknowledged to be, it seems to me,
the real dilemma because, as I stated earlier, given that we are
going to hear some evidence from a senior judge soon which will
be useful, as I understand it often the deal in court at the moment
will be that the wife and mother keeps the home for the sake of
the children, and it just seems to me that if we want to be clear
about pension splitting per se we could end up in a situation
where it is still the husband that largely keeps the pension fund.
In other words—and I am repeating myself now—family
law practice and the pension splitting objective will often be
in conflict with one another.
(Mr Denham) I think it is important to be clear
on this point and it is not possible to try to use a process like
pension sharing on divorce to tackle all of the issues that arise
about whether any individual can build up a full or a decent pension
on retirement. It has been the case for many years now that the
courts have been able to take pension rights into account in a
divorce settlement, but the flaw in the law is that in many cases
the law has not allowed that to be done effectively or fairly.
It is quite important to understand that what is being proposed
here is a way of making the treatment of pension rights in divorce
fair. It is not a process of taking the pension rights right outside
the rest of the divorce settlement and trying to deal with them
entirely separately. Yes, there will be circumstances (and I think
the consultation paper makes this quite clear) where a divorce,
where there are pension rights, does not lead to a split in those
pension rights. What we are trying to seek is a situation where
all of the assets which are built up in a marriage can be shared
fairly at the point of divorce and it will be for the courts ultimately
if there is no agreement to determine exactly how that should
be done and what role the pension should play in that.
6. Can I push this one stage further because
I think it is an interesting issue and I can see the complexities
because if we were too prescriptive as a Parliament, so that we
have to have pension splitting, perhaps (I am not sure) it could
mean that more women and children in future have to leave the
family home, so it seems to me there is a genuine dilemma here.
Having said that, can I just ask whether the Department have considered
pushing the pension objective further and actually saying to courts
that when the division of assets is being made we expect the pension
objective to be crucial and we do expect there to be some proper
splitting of the pension given our concerns about financial insecurities
in old age?
(Mr Denham) We obviously looked at a wide range
of options. I have to say, and I would be interested in the views
of the Select Committee, that if I gave you a simple example of
where the matrimonial home was worth £80,000 and the pension
rights were worth £80,000 and there were no other assets
to be taken into account. If we had said that the pension rights
should be split, say, 50/50, so that £40,000 went to the
former spouse and £40,000 to the husband, you would either
be in a situation then of saying you then determine the matrimonial
home presumably on the basis of who has custody of the children,
leaving one partner with £40,000 out of the settlement and
the other with £120,000, or you end up in a situation where
you would appear to need to force the sale of the property in
order to realise the assets and split the finances differently.
You would be quite right to say we drew back, in trying to tackle
the situation where one partner cannot get a fair share of the
assets, from going in the other direction to a situation where
splitting the pension rights so overrode the other assets in the
marriage that it created an unfairness in the other direction.
7. In a way the idea of pension sharing
on divorce is arguably a bit inaccurate because the objective
is to have a fairer splitting of assets on divorce and explicitly
including the pension fund. That is not quite the same as pension
splitting on divorce. I think that is just a quibble. Just in
terms of the public debate I think we need to be clear about that.
(Mr Denham) It is certainly a very accurate description
because at the moment pensions cannot be shared fairly on divorce.
That is the problem that we are trying to tackle. What this legislation
allows is for those pensions to be shared fairly on divorce. It
does not compel the sharing of the pension on divorce. That, for
the reasons I have given, could create inequities of another sort,
but it allows it to happen.
Mr Goggins
8. One of the 32 success measures in the
Green Paper is to ensure that all in retirement have a decent
minimum income. I would be interested in your comments, purely
as an extension of the line of questioning that Malcolm Wicks
has been following, about how that objective might be part of
this process. Let me just give you an example. A couple, say aged
45, divorcing, splitting their assets, may well end up doing what
Malcolm suggested, that the wife, the mother of the children,
keeps the house and the pension remains with the man. At 45 that
might seem a fair split of the assets, but aged 65 the man may
have retained all his rights to pension but the woman may now
have a house which she cannot afford to repair and may be dependent
upon the state for income support top-up. That may be the eventual
outcome of what was a fair split in mid life but in retirement
does not look fair at all.
(Mr Denham) The principle that family law works
towards is trying to achieve a clean break on divorce, that at
the time the divorce takes place you try—and this is one
of the problems with the current pension provisions with earmarking
and attachment and so on, that they do not allow a clean break—to
apply a fair, clean break at the time the divorce takes place.
It is difficult therefore to see that you could be entirely consistent
with that principle and try to look too far forward into the future
as to what might happen with a lifetime career path pattern for
either individual. What I think we need to recognise is that pension
sharing will make a contribution in a number of cases, and we
suggested perhaps 50,000 a year on our best estimates, which is
a minority of the divorces which take place each year, but in
those minorities we will make a contribution to enabling those
women to have a share in the pension rights which have accrued
during the marriage. I do not think we could expect that process
to resolve all of the issues facing women trying to build up decent
pensions in retirement, which is why in the wider review we will
certainly be looking at second tier pension provision including
SERPS, and we will need to look at the position of women in particular
who are unable to build decent pension rights because of their
caring responsibilities. In the case that you gave clearly one
needs to look at the ability of a woman to work, given her child
care responsibilities, and to build up her own pension rights
during the period following the divorce. In your scenario I would
not take it for granted that if a woman is divorced at the age
of 45 she is then therefore somehow dependent entirely right through
into her retirement on whatever the divorce settlement was.
Mr Leigh
9. The Chairman in introducing this said
this was a very complex area, but I suspect that we are now in
the area where most of the public will be most interested. They
will not be too concerned about the complexities. I take it that
we were united in our desire to see less divorce, not more. Both
parties have accepted that we are going to remove the legal delays
to divorce, so the only bar that remains presumably is the pain
bar. I have always been very attracted to the Scottish concept
that you basically apply the judgement of Solomon in these cases,
that people have to realise that when they get divorced it is
going to cost both of them a lot of pain financially and that
no party will be better off than the other party. The assets will
be split. The trouble is that many men feel very aggrieved in
this whole divorce process. They feel that they get divorced,
the majority of divorces are now initiated by women, often younger
women, the men feel that they lose the house because the house
goes with the kids, and what they will be worried about in this
whole process I think is that, having lost the house, they are
now going to lose the pension. This is really building on Malcolm's
point. I know it is very difficult for you to answer this but
I think you have got to reassure many men out there who do feel
aggrieved by this whole process—and they feel aggrieved
by things like the Child Support Agency and things like that;
we know that, we get a huge postbag on these issues—that
the pain will be equally shared and, as Malcolm said, we will
develop a system where everything is thrown in the pot and although
the women may get the house for the time being, at the end of
the day no one party will be better off than the other party.
Do you understand what I am saying? It is an important political
(not party political) point.
(Mr Denham) In a sense you are putting by implication
the opposing point of view to Malcolm Wicks in terms of the practical
implications of it. I think it is so essential that we give the
assurance that this issue is about fairness in divorce. It is
about ensuring that pensions can be dealt with fairly in divorce
because we take the view that they cannot be dealt with fairly
at the moment because we do not have the legal provisions which
enable the fair splitting of pension fund assets and therefore
in this situation in practice some people can be gainers within
a marriage, so rather than having a fair division of the assets
on divorce, some people can be gainers but that is because the
law does not allow the sort of pension sharing that we are talking
about at the moment. That is the inequity in the law that we are
trying to address through these proposals, but I think to those
constituents and others the reassurance must be that this is about
fairness.
Mr Pond
10. In all the discussions we have had,
Minister, about the balance between different types of assets,
the house on one side, the pension entitlements on the other,
these are going to be very complex issues in terms of the transfer
and of course it places a big new burden on family lawyers and
solicitors to advise their clients on what is best for them in
terms of this balance. Given that most of them will have trained
and operated under a very different environment, are you confident
that family lawyers will have the skills necessary to be able
to advise their clients properly, or are they all going to have
to train as independent financial advisers by the year 2000? Is
the Law Society taking this on board with sufficient speed? Will
it all be in place in time?
(Mr Denham) I would like to divide that if I may
into two parts. One is the ability of lawyers and solicitors (and,
indeed, judges) to acquire the necessary training, but in the
case of judges the normal extra training procedures that would
take place as the new legislation comes into force would apply
here. I understand that the family law solicitors are already
beginning their own training and education exercises amongst their
own members based on the draft legislation which you have. You
are right in saying that there will be a need for training on
better understanding but I am confident that that process is already
under way. On the question of financial advice, one needs to recognise
that if somebody is taking a decision about for example whether
they should take up an option to remain within a pension scheme
or to take the funds elsewhere into an annuity or into a personal
pension, people will need advice on that basis. On occasion that
will be available through solicitors if they are properly registered
and comply with the Financial Services Act and, as an aside, we
will clearly need to look at the evolution of the new Financial
Services Act to make sure that everything is in step. In principle
at the moment you can get independent financial advice properly
regulated from some legal practitioners. Or individuals will need
to take the responsibility of seeking their own advice. That needs
to be quite clear, that individuals undertaking a divorce have
some responsibilities about the management of their own affairs
which only they can exercise, and that they will need to take
responsibility there about where they turn for advice and to ensure
that they seek advice that is properly regulated.
Ms Hewitt
11. I want to come back if I may to this
issue we were exploring a minute ago about house versus pension
fund because even if the nominal values of the house and pension
fund are identical at the point of divorce they are not the same
kind of asset. As Paul was saying, at the point of retirement
the house may be a liability but a pension becomes an income stream.
They are very different kinds of assets. I just wondered how far
you thought that particular problem might be recognised in families
where there are children by saying that although the residential
parent will continue to live in the matrimonial home while the
children are growing up, actually the appropriate route is then
to sell the house when the youngest child grows up and divide
the assets at that point, and take that presumed sale into account
when you are looking at what the split of the pension would be,
so that both partners get a share of the capital value of the
house but both partners also in most cases get a share of the
fund that is going to give them an income stream in retirement.
(Mr Denham) I can understand and appreciate the
point you are making, but I would return to a basic point of principle,
that in drafting the legislation we have tried to bring pensions
into line with the way in which matrimonial assets are dealt with
within family law at present. In that sense the pension is treated
and under this is effectively treated in an equivalent way to
somebody who has a large amount of money in realisable savings
which might under the current law be offset against the value
of a house. In that sense pension assets are perhaps less easily
realisable because you cannot call on them until you retire and
money that you may have in TESSAs or PEPs or unit trusts or whatever,
where, although in principle what you have suggested one might
say should be brought into account, it would not normally be brought
into account largely because of the basis of the clean break settlement.
I am getting slightly out of my ministerial responsibilities but
in going through this area the trend in family law has to be to
move away from arrangements which require another party to take
further action 20 or perhaps 30 years in the future to realise
assets and the principle has very much been to move right across
family law to splitting assets cleanly so that two individuals
are tied to each other as little as possible beyond that settlement.
The sort of proposal that you put forward which could be applied
irrespective of pension sharing if there were other financial
assets around would be a huge break with that. It needs to be
understood that we have not sought to use this legislation as
a way of re-writing family law. I would say as a matter of principle
that if people want family law to be changed then we should address
the issues of family law in the way the courts operate in divorce
and not to treat pensions in divorce as a way of changing wider
family law.
12. I understand that point. I would simply
want to observe that I think there is a very real problem with
the clean break principle where there are children, where there
is not and should not be a clean break between parents and children
and that will have financial implications that of course we totally
accepted as a Government in the Child Support Act. I take your
point about not using pension share to change family law.
(Mr Denham) The Child Support Act though is of
course about support for children of a marriage and perhaps raises
some different principles. I have I hope made the position reasonably
clear about the way we have approached this legislation.
Chairman
13. I want to move on to the courts but
before I do that I would not mind observing myself that although
your original answer to Malcolm's question about the conflict
between the two objectives is sufficient in terms of England and
Wales, it is actually not in terms of Scotland. It is not as simple
as you suggested it was because in Scotland, as I know for a certain
fact because in a previous incarnation I did some divorces in
Scottish courts, the assets are those judged to be acquired during
the subsistence of the marriage existing at the point of the separation,
but there is a working presumption in the Scottish courts that
there should be an equal division of the matrimonial assets, and
"equal" means 50 per cent. Therefore what you said about
the English situation does not cover entirely what happens in
Scotland. Will you be very careful to take that into account in
terms of the consideration of this question because there are
differences between the two jurisdictions?
(Mr Denham) Yes. First, there are differences,
you are quite in saying, between the two jurisdictions. The legislation
has been framed to bring the treatment of pensions into line with
the treatment of matrimonial assets in the two jurisdictions.
14. You could make it 50 per cent. You could
actually make it a mandatory, almost prescriptive, 50 per cent
division of the pension assets in Scotland and do just what you
have said: keep it running with the grain of what exists already.
Have you thought about that?
(Mr Denham) Certainly the way the pension sharing
would operate in Scotland is within that tradition about the division
of assets, but certainly I have not understood the family law
framework in Scotland as requiring the pension assets to be divided
50/50 because there is a wider settlement risk. The 50/50 division
of assets as I understand it—and I stand to be corrected—applies
to the assets as a whole.
15. That is true.
(Mr Denham) Not to each individual asset which
is there. The application of a 50/50 split to the pension alone
would therefore have knock-on implications for treatment of the
other assets.
16. I do not doubt that. I am just suggesting
to you that if you wanted to do that—the Government seem
to have considered it and moved away from that proposition—in
Scotland you could do it and it would not make much of a difference.
I agree that there is a discretion still in the courts, but I
just want you to bear that in mind during the course of further
consideration.
(Mr Denham) It is fair to say, Chairman, that
we have not sought to go beyond the provisions which are in the
family law jurisdictions in the different countries. That has
been quite a principle.
Mr Wicks: Last night
in France both teams should have got one and a half goals each!
Chairman: That is
out of order. I will not have this insurrection from the ranks
of my own colleagues on sensitive issues!
Mr Pond: I thought
the Chair was tetchy this morning!
Chairman
17. If in the fullness of time you did think
that the balance was getting out of kilter—I am talking
about a five or 10-year period—would you be prepared to
monitor and even go as far as to have targets in your own mind
about the balance that Malcolm alluded to as getting out of kilter—would
the Government be concerned about that and think to take corrective
action at a later stage?
(Mr Denham) There are a number of things. First,
we will want to monitor the effectiveness of the legislation and
its practical impact and we are already monitoring the impact
of the earmarking and attachment provisions that were brought
in under the last Pensions Act to see how those are working. Secondly,
as you probably know, the Lord Chancellor has asked his advisory
group on ancillary relief to look at some of these issues on the
question of prenuptial agreements and how those might work and,
where there is no such agreement, a presumption that matrimonial
property might be split equally between parties and that is an
issue which has been opened up for discussion in England and Wales.
What I do recognise is that potentially family law can evolve
over time in England and Wales and in Scotland and it will be
necessary for pension sharing provisions to evolve with those
changes of family law.
18. And of course cohabiting couples leads
you back to Malcolm Wicks' original comment about poverty in old
age for women. I guess the Government have not really looked at
that at all.
(Mr Denham) I understand the Law Commission is
considering in a wider sense the issue of cohabitation. Cohabiting
couples are not currently recognised in law, either in terms of
state pension benefits or in terms of occupational pension provision,
although occupational schemes are free to make discretionary arrangements
for cohabiting couples and others who are financially dependent
on those schemes, but that is not laid down in law. Again, a constraint
perhaps but a right one in drafting this legislation, is that
we have not sought to use this legislation to establish new bits
of family law, for example those we need to cover cohabiting couples.
That must come from a much wider Government consideration about
policy in that area.
Chairman: That has
been a very useful discussion. We have taken a long time on that
but I think you will have got the drift that that whole question
which Malcolm raised initially is something that is very much
in our minds.
Mr Goggins
19. My question leads on from one of the
Chairman's questions about differences between Scotland and England
and Wales. It is not just the way that the assets are split; it
is also the period of time over which the assets are measured
and clearly there are differences there between what happens in
Scotland and what happens in England and Wales. In Scotland as
I understand it is the period of the marriage which is the relevant
factor. In England and Wales it is the total value of the asset.
I just wondered what observations you have got on that and indeed
whether there is any consideration of extending the provisions
in Scotland into the law in England and Wales.
(Mr Denham) The first observation is that you
are right: there is a difference in treatment. The second is that
I think a change in that is something that would have to be led
by the Lord Chancellor's Department. As I have said, he has indicated
that he has asked an advisory group to look at these issues and
how these matters are dealt with in England and Wales. It is certainly
quite a question for me to speculate on there being any changes
but if there were any changes to come in that area, then our intention
at the moment would be that those would be reflected in the pension
sharing arrangements. The pension sharing arrangements reflect
what exists at the moment. If there were to be a different treatment
of matrimonial assets in the future, to speculate on that, then
you would expect pension sharing logically to fall into the same
pattern of treatment.
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