My noble friend Lord German has raised a very important issue that this House has long recognised: the need for transparency in pension schemes. I assure noble Lords that this is an issue that the Government take very seriously. Indeed, in their publication Better Workplace Pensions: Putting Savers’ Interests First on 17 October 2014, the Government committed to improving the governance of workplace pensions and transparency surrounding the costs and charges which members are faced with, including better information about transaction costs related to buying and selling investments. I know that this amendment goes much beyond that but it indicates the direction of travel.
Noble Lords will also be aware that this Government have recently consulted on draft legislation which, subject to parliamentary approval, will introduce from April this year new requirements on trustees to improve the governance of trust-based schemes. Trustees will be required to demonstrate that they have complied with new standards of governance by completing a statement, signed off by the chair of trustees, annually. Similar rules are to be introduced by the Financial Conduct Authority to require the newly formed independent governance committees to demonstrate that they have complied with such rules for the contract-based side of the workplace pensions market on a similar timescale. The Government intend to build on this first phase of transparency work. We are committed to consulting further, later this year, on how we propose to introduce transparency on additional costs and charges. The Financial Conduct Authority will also be consulting on similar new requirements in relation to workplace pensions.
Regulations and rules made as a result of the Pensions Act 2014 will significantly improve the transparency of costs and charges in pension schemes and lead to members receiving better value for money. However, I recognise that the proposed amendment would go much further than this. It seeks to place requirements on trustees and managers of occupational and all other personal schemes to provide members with detailed additional information relating to their schemes’ investment functions, over and above what is already required, and additional to the improved transparency of costs and charges information that we intend to introduce from April. The amendment, were it to be accepted, would require trustees and managers to provide investment-related information to members on request where that is reasonable—and there is a rebuttable presumption that it is—which would be
additional to existing requirements and would do so before we have consulted with the industry, savers and other interested stakeholders, as we announced we would in our
Better Workplace Pensions
consultation last October.
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We believe that there is merit in examining and considering further the requirements contained in this amendment. However, we consider that greater transparency in relation to costs and charges, as well as about how schemes manage their investments, go hand in hand. As such, they would be better considered together as part of the same well established transparency work programme, which is already under way and which we are committed to consult on later this year. To introduce additional but closely related disclosure requirements regarding investments into primary legislation in advance of the anticipated coming into force of the first phase of costs and charges disclosure in April, and to pre-empt the planned consultation on a further phase of transparency, risks introducing transparency in a piecemeal and unco-ordinated way, without the relevant guidance and optimal regulatory frameworks being in place to cope with such requirements.
Existing primary legislation already provides the powers for making regulations along the lines suggested by the amendment. Those powers should not be duplicated in further primary legislation. Further, the Government are sympathetic to the need for greater transparency in this area, but this can be better achieved through secondary legislation under existing powers. Introducing these requirements through the amendment would remove the opportunity to consult all relevant stakeholders. Secondary legislation would, of course, require consultation. There is overlap and duplication between the suggested amendment and existing provision already contained in secondary legislation. To mitigate the risk of overlap and avoid unnecessary duplication of provision, we would wish fully to examine the suggested requirements in the proposed amendment against the full range of existing provision.
As I have already mentioned, this could be more fully and carefully assessed by way of a consultation, involving both industry and stakeholders, which my right honourable friend the Minister for Pensions has already committed to hold later in 2015 in relation to trust-based pensions. This would allow the Government the opportunity to make the best assessment of what additional disclosure is needed with reference to a full range of views and evidence and to do this in conjunction with work for a further phase of enhanced charges and costs transparency. Any new requirements could then be introduced by way of amending or adding to existing provisions in secondary legislation.
As I said, the Government have already committed to consulting on potential investment disclosure requirements for trust-based schemes. My right honourable friend the Minister for Pensions, when asked by an interested stakeholder about introducing further requirements, committed the Government to this approach. I restate that commitment, which the Government consider a vital part of our pensions reform. I therefore ask my noble friend Lord German to withdraw the amendment.
Lord German: I thank my noble friend the Minister for that detailed response. What I was particularly hoping to hear, as noble Lords may imagine, was where we are going next and what developments we can see being taken forward. If I may try to interpret what my noble friend the Minister has said, it is that we are moving forward on costs and charges and that is the direction of travel; that this is additional, although there may be some overlap with what is being proposed; and that at some stage in 2015 there will be a further consultation which will encompass many of these issues, including the issues raised by this amendment. If my interpretation of what was said is correct, that is fine; it seems to me to be an appropriate next step.
The other area, of course, is about powers. My noble friend suggested that existing primary legislation already has these powers. I should be grateful if he could identify—he may want to do it by a note rather than by trying to give a detailed answer now—where those primary powers lie, under which Acts, so that we can be clear that they cover the range of activities we have been talking about today.
I feel heartened that the Government realise that the costs and charges are a starting point in a much longer journey. I hope that today in your Lordships’ House represents one further step in taking this whole area of transparency further but with a conclusion in mind so that it is not too far away. On the basis that I look forward to the consultation later in the year and to understanding how the powers are derived, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Clause 43: Power to create other exemptions from indexation
22A: Clause 43, page 18, line 11, at end insert “, unless that pension (or that part of a pension) is a cash balance benefit within the meaning of section 51ZB of this Act.”
Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con): My Lords, it is always a pleasure to speak about pensions. As we have heard today, the Bill provides an opportunity to discuss some really chunky issues in the arena of pensions in terms of guidance, trustee powers, investments and so on. It also gives us an opportunity to look at details and minutiae and perhaps, not to put it too bluntly, to clear some horsemeat out of the statutory food chain. I hope that that is what my amendments might achieve today.
I shall focus on Clause 43 and the whole question of indexation and its inconsistent application to specific types of pension schemes. As you would imagine—it is to do with pensions, after all—it is complicated and
detailed and makes your head hurt. I will not go into the minutiae today; if I may, I will write to the Minister with the detailed background to my amendment. Effectively, I would like to achieve consistency across the application of indexation to particular types of pension scheme. To give some history to this, the 1995 Act required certain occupational pension schemes to have indexation applied. Over the years the type of indexation has changed, but for the purpose of this debate we should just consider it to be limited price indexation, or LPI. The 2004 Act removed that obligation for money purchase schemes. The 2011 Act followed on by removing that obligation for cash balance pots. So far, so good.
Unfortunately, there is what I would describe as quite a curious kicker in the 2011 Act: if you have a cash balance pot in a scheme that is contracted out, LPI increases will have to be applied to that, and a member will have to take LPI increases whether or not they want them. If I were a member in such a situation and I were contracted out, I would be forced to take limited price indexation increases, whether or not I wanted them. If I were contracted out for a period and then contracted back in, I would still be forced to take LPI increases, whether or not I wanted them.
Perhaps even more curiously, if I were a member of the scheme, cash balance pot in hand, and I had never been contracted out, but another member, most likely unknown to me and potentially even at a different time from when I was a member of the scheme, was contracted out, I would still be forced to take LPI increases. Even more bizarrely, perhaps, if that member then left the scheme, transferred out or died, I would then get the opportunity to choose whether or not I wanted LPI increases. It seems curious that one’s decisions over one’s pension pot can be so influenced by an unknown other who just happens to have been a member of the scheme and contracted out at a particular time, and difficult to believe that this could ever have been the policy intention. It probably underscores yet again the point that pretty much anything to do with pensions is complicated.
The complication is further added to because it is not possible to remove this horsemeat from the statutory process with regulations. It requires primary legislation. It is why, when Clause 43 was first proposed, there was—I would not go so far as to say excitement—a lot of interest in whether this clause would in fact close this loophole. It gets close but unfortunately again the problem comes whereby, for future cash balance pots, LPI will not have to be applied. Job done? Sadly not. It still leaves a toxic tail that any benefits or rights accrued between 1997 and whatever the commencement date of this Bill is still require LPI increases to be applied, whether the person wants them or not.
On one level I am not suggesting that it is a bad thing of itself for people to have to take inflation-linked increasing annuities. Perhaps it is overly paternalistic to force this; certainly it is inconsistent when you look at the treatment of cash balance pots and money purchase benefits, when in many ways it is really difficult to get a cigarette paper between those benefits, but that is the case as it stands and is set out in Clause 43.
So to my amendments. Amendment 22A would posit a regulatory-making power within the Act which would enable this to be put right. It would also give the space for people to consider whether there was potentially any sirloin within the horsemeat. I do not think there is. Others may, particularly if they focus on rights that have been achieved while that individual member was actually contracted out. I do not think that gets across the line. I think Amendment 22B is far more to the purpose, whereby a new Clause 43 would address this problem, not least through proposed new subsection (9), which would take us absolutely to these sunny uplands which everybody would desire where there is consistency across the treatment of benefits, whichever pot you may have—cash balance or money purchase.
I considered tabling an Amendment 22C—it could best be described as the whole cash balance hog—whereby you would scrub out the end of new Section 51(5B)(c) and replace that with some wording which would in effect state that it was down to the member to choose, irrespective of their contracting out. It would be for the member to decide whether they wanted LPI increases on their pension pot at that point. This seems clear; this seems consistent. Perhaps, and this is the reason why I decided not to table the amendment, it may be too big a leap at this stage but I certainly urge my noble friend the Minister to strongly consider the amendments, not least Amendment 22B. We have had horsemeat; we have had a sliver—perhaps—of sirloin; we have had the whole cash balance hog, at which point I beg to move.
9.15 pm
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth: My Lords, first, I thank my noble friend Lord Holmes for sharing his concerns with us. He is very much the Desert Orchid of the Government Back Benches. He steered us to removing some horsemeat from the food chain in a typically earthy metaphor, although he got mixed up later with “sunny uplands”. However, I will do what I can.
I confirm that the Government are aware of this issue, and we have some sympathy with the points that my noble friend made and the anomalies that he has highlighted. The requirement to index cash balance benefits was removed by the Pensions Act 2011, as he rightly stated, in response to representations from the pensions industry. It was pointed out that the requirement to index money purchase benefits was removed in 2005, and cash balance benefits are very similar in that entitlement is generally based on calculation of a lump sum rather than an income stream. Therefore it was a relatively easy decision to follow suit with cash balance benefits when the opportunity arose. However, the decision was made at that time that we would not disturb contracted-out schemes—they are subject to their own requirements. That was for very good and very technical reasons.
We now accept that in theory that means that there could be members with rights to cash balance benefits that still have to be indexed, and that might be because another totally unconnected member has some contracted-out pension rights somewhere in the same
scheme. That does seem odd, but to be honest we have not received any specific representations and we do not know of any particular case of concern. If the noble Lord can bring forward any specific examples of schemes or individuals who have suffered detriment as a result of this issue, it would clearly support the case for change that he has eloquently set out.
We are aware that the Association of Pension Lawyers is also championing this issue but, as I say, until we know the size of the problem, or indeed if there is a problem in the sense of whether there are people suffering detriment, it is difficult to know how to deal with it and what form that action should take, whether it is through this legislation or elsewhere. We need to take account of the changes coming up in April because they will give members more say in how they spend their pension money, so some of the people caught in the situation at the moment could, arguably, decide to take a lump sum then reinvest that in an annuity without the indexation requirement, although admittedly, there will be problems with taxation at the highest level there, according to that particular taxpayer. As I said, if my noble friend Lord Holmes is able to come up with some specific examples of concern, I hope that we will be able to have a continuing dialogue with him and other noble Lords on this subject. However, in the mean time I respectfully ask him to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Holmes of Richmond: I am grateful to my noble friend for that response. I will be happy to provide some examples from my time in practice as a pensions lawyer—a number of examples immediately spring to mind. However, so as not to detain us this evening I will be happy to write to my noble friend with details of those.
This is not the greatest issue on the planet and will not make a huge difference to pensions as we know them, but there are a significant number of situations where it bites and impacts. I cannot envisage a downside to making this change, which is not that tricky to bring about. It needs to be done through primary legislation and this is an ideal, opportune moment to do it.
I accept the point on the changes this April, in that if members take pre-crystallised benefits there is a potential route around that. However, even taking that on board, there is still a significant enough issue that it is very much worth looking at this clause and what we might be able to do. I will be very happy to provide that information and to carry on the dialogue with my noble friend. At this stage, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Clause 44: Removal of requirement to maintain register of independent trustees
Debate on whether Clause 44 should stand part of the Bill.
Lord McAvoy (Lab): My Lords, we have tabled a clause stand part debate to scrutinise the rationale behind Clause 44 and the likely cost savings estimated by the department. First, can the Minister provide a few examples—or even one example—of how the process for selecting trustees under Section 7 of the 1995 Act operates? It is my understanding that following the removal of the requirement to operate a register, the regulator will appoint trustees for a scheme that has suffered an insolvency through a flexible procurement panel. What is the typical cost of recruiting in this way rather than through a register of trustees and how does this compare to the cost of maintaining that register?
In Committee in the other place the Minister discussed the Government’s Red Tape Challenge, specifically the desire to remove £2 million-worth of regulation on businesses for every £1 million introduced. He also said that the savings that will be made by the Pensions Regulator will be passed on to pension schemes and then on to savers. We are therefore understandably keen to get an estimate of the windfall that awaits pension savers once this clause is passed. What is the saving for pension schemes and can the Minister say whether he can guarantee that this is passed to contributors?
The clause stand part debate is intended to probe these details. I hope the Minister will be able to help in this way.
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his contribution to the debate. Clause 44 fulfils a government commitment which he outlined under the Red Tape Challenge to remove statutory requirements which are felt to be superfluous. This is such an example. He rightly set out that there is already an existing power for the Pensions Regulator to appoint trustees where he can appoint a trustee without reference to the register. Therefore, it would not seem to present a problem that the register goes. I will come back to that issue.
I will clarify a point made by the noble Lord. The Minister who made the commitment about savings was the Pensions Minister in another place. I am sure that if he said it we can underline the commitment. It is not a statement that I or a Minister in the Lords made, but I am aware that any savings from this will be reinvested and we will confirm that in writing to the noble Lord. I understand that to be the position.
I am happy to reassure the House that the regulator is committed to ensuring that any process to replace the register would provide the same level of assurance to members and schemes that an independent trustee appointed to a scheme is fit for the task. That, after all, is the paramount issue. The selection criteria would remain rigorous and transparent. The criteria and processes being published on the regulator’s website, along with the procedures for appointing and removing trustees, would be guaranteed. We will ensure that appointments will continue to deliver the best candidate for the job, given the specific circumstances of the scheme in question.
I think there is little doubt that this register is superfluous and that there is the ability for the Pensions Regulator to draw on an existing pool of trustees without the need for the register. As the noble Lord,
Lord McAvoy has highlighted, savings will be reinvested and I will confirm that in writing to him. On that basis, I ask that the clause should stand part of the Bill.
Clause 45: Rules about modification of schemes
23: Clause 45, page 19, line 10, at beginning insert “which is not a right or entitlement to collective benefits becoming, or”
Clause 45, as amended, agreed.
23A: After Clause 45, insert the following new Clause—
“National Employment Savings Trust transfers
In relation to the National Employment Savings Trust, within one month of the passing of this Act the Secretary of State must lift the ban on transfers and the contribution cap.”
Lord Bradley: My Lords, the amendment in my name and that of my noble friend Lord McAvoy would require the Government to lift the restrictions on the National Employment Savings Trust—or NEST, as it is commonly known—within one month of Royal Assent. This includes the ban on transfers and the contribution cap.
The Government’s decision not to lift the contributions limit and bulk transfer restrictions on NEST until April 2017 or to lift the ban on individual transfers in and out until October 2015 is cause for real concern. In his Written Statement of 26 September, the Minister said that,
“the European Commission has considered and approved the modifications to the State aid case for NEST”.—[
Official Report
, 26/9/14; col. WS 167.]
He can therefore see no barrier to lifting the restrictions that apply to NEST within the timescale set out in our amendment. Crucially, I believe it to be in the public interest for the Government to proceed in such a way.
I cannot understand why the Minister is so reluctant to lift the restrictions. I will highlight all the positive statements made by the noble Lord, Lord Freud, in support of NEST. The noble Lord, Lord Freud, said, in a Written Statement on 26 September, that NEST has proved its value. It now has more than 1.5 million scheme members and works with about 9,000 employers. That number is rising. NEST provides a quality, low-cost pension scheme targeted at low to moderate earners and small employers. Its public service obligation ensures that NEST makes sure all employers are able to engage with their automatic enrolment obligations. On 18 November, the Minister reminded us:
“From June 2015 1.2 million smaller employers—those with fewer than 50 workers—will start to engage with auto enrolment. NEST will be critical in ensuring that these small employers are able to access low-cost pension provision for their workers”.—[Official Report, 18/11/14; col. WS 13.]
I think that all sides of the House agree with the Minister on the crucial role NEST has to play in its target market, and with the evidence that it is performing very well.
It is worth expanding on the NEST success story. As the pensions industry acknowledges, NEST provides best practice standards, which have encouraged the insurance companies to improve their standards. It is low cost for employers and employees. It is simple and cheap to administer. It has high standards of governance. As NEST’s website proudly states, it has an “award-winning investment strategy”. Finally, NEST provides an excellent solution for employers with a high staff turnover, such as the catering and construction industries, because the pots remain and can be paid into by the next employer. Can the Minister confirm that he agrees with this analysis: that NEST has proved its effectiveness and worth? If he does, I fail to understand his reluctance to lift the restrictions.
I agree that there was a good case for having restrictions before it was clear how the market would progress, but these restrictions are no longer justified. The auto-enrolment market is now well under way and NEST has not taken all the business, which had been a concern among some. We should therefore examine the impact of failing to lift the restrictions and caps within one month of Royal Assent, as our amendment suggests. The restrictions to date have meant that NEST has been able to get less of that low and medium-earning pension than it otherwise would have done. If this continues, the effect would be to contribute to the increase in the number of small, dormant pension pots. It may also miss out on the benefits of scale. We debated that earlier.
Banning transfers in and out will be a problem for employers. The Department for Work and Pensions’ research found that more than 80% of employers want one provider. That makes sense: it reduces their administrative burden and means that they can provide their staff with pensions that are easier to understand. The ban means that employers who are thinking about using NEST but currently have a pension scheme of any type will be discouraged from using NEST because they cannot transfer in the pension assets in their current scheme. The Government purport to encourage employers to use NEST but, by refusing to lift the ban on transfers in and out right away, the effect is to discourage employers who currently have a scheme elsewhere.
9.30 pm
While the contribution limit will be lifted from 2017, retaining the income cap will discourage employers who have a broader salary range than low to middle income earners using NEST as they will have to administer two pension schemes. This may be a minority of employers, but it is an unnecessary restriction and one which we know employers will not like.
We conclude, regretfully, that NEST is being disadvantaged against many of its market competitors, and we cannot understand why the Minister is doing
this. The effect of the Government failing to lift the caps and restrictions in time for the remaining employers to establish auto-enrolment is to ensure that the restrictions on NEST remain until every employer has staged. Is it really the Government’s intention that by the time NEST restrictions are lifted auto-enrolment will be complete?
The Minister should consider also the public interest obligations of NEST and the subsidy that it receives from the taxpayer. First, the caps and restrictions mean that NEST is disadvantaged in competing for many of the low and medium-earning savers for whom it is designed. That may well result in customer detriment for many of those workers. Secondly, the Government’s proposals fail the public interest test. If large numbers of low and medium-earning employees cannot use NEST, it is being prevented from delivering its public interest obligation. Thirdly, restricting NEST impacts on its financial position and makes it harder to pay back the state aid earlier which would allow it to reduce its charges even further. This again undermines NEST’s public interest obligation and its mission to deliver low-charge, high-return pension provision.
Finally, the rest of the industry is reported in the pensions press as increasingly not having the capacity or, possibly, the desire to cope with all the employers who are still to establish auto-enrolment. Smaller employers, often with low to medium-paid staff, are in this position. Having had, it is said, the advantage of the NEST restrictions in place while larger employers establish their auto-enrolment schemes, the big pension providers have recruited the profitable business. Perhaps the industry is less interested in the smaller end of the market, and thus the need for NEST is even greater.
I am sure that the Minister will be able to explain why the Government have so far refused to lift the restrictions. I urge him to accept the amendment. If he cannot do so today, I hope he will take it away and reconsider before Report the strong case for the restrictions to be lifted not in a few years’ time but before auto-enrolment is complete. I beg to move.
Baroness Drake: My Lords, I do not want to spend too much time on this. Obviously I am not unfamiliar with the issue of NEST, and the restrictions on NEST. We are now in a position, in 2015, where the continued bans on the transfer into NEST are clearly to the detriment of pension savers. It will be increasingly difficult to mobilise the argument that continuing those bans is in the pension saver’s interest. It denies many people a good home for their legacy savings and is unquestionably increasing the proliferation of small pots, particularly in the SME community. One of the merits of NEST is that it would reduce the proliferation of small pots. It is not benefiting the employers any more, who want the flexibility to use NEST and bulk transfer the accrued pension savings of their existing employees or scheme members, which they are denied. As far as I can see, the main beneficiaries of the continued ban are still predominantly the private pension providers that benefit from restricting NEST’s market proposition.
The Government have dealt with the EU state aid requirements, which no longer pose a barrier. The desire to get NEST to focus on a target market of
small and medium-sized employers has been achieved. The auto-enrolment market is well under way. A cursory look at the figures will show that the private providers have secured a very large proportion of the new pension business, which is likely to grow. NEST is hardly tipping the market against them any more.
It is difficult to see why the Government are taking so long to make a change that would benefit pension savers and, particularly, facilitate efficiency among the employers who are bearing the responsibility of having to establish workplace pensions and cannot pick up what may be a preferred position in NEST because they are left having to run an arrangement for the legacy savings of their existing scheme members or employees.
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bradley, for moving this amendment and the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, for her contribution. As noble Lords will be aware, NEST was established to support automatic enrolment by ensuring that all workers have access to a low-cost workplace pension scheme. Its design, including the annual contribution limit and transfer restrictions, focuses NEST on its target market of low to moderate earners and smaller employers who the market found difficult to serve. Since October 2012, when automatic enrolment began, NEST has fulfilled its role very successfully. I am happy to reinforce the statements made by my noble friend Lord Freud. We think that it has done an exceptional job. It already has more than 1.8 million members and 10,500 participating employers. NEST is doing what it was set up to do—supporting automatic enrolment.
During the winter of 2012 and the spring of 2013, the Department for Work and Pensions undertook a call for evidence. This sought to assess whether there was evidence that the annual contribution limit and the transfer restrictions placed on NEST were preventing it serving the market that it was designed for. The evidence showed that these two constraints were not preventing NEST serving its target market. That said, the call for evidence revealed that the constraints were sometimes perceived as a barrier to using NEST. Smaller employers have limited experience of providing pensions for their workplace. A perception among smaller employers that using NEST is unduly complex could make choosing a scheme unnecessarily complicated. This could damage confidence in automatic enrolment and undermine its aims.
With that in mind and taking account of the evidence, the Government determined that removing the annual contribution limit and the transfer restrictions that we are debating to address the perception of restriction would not be a proportionate response at the time, given the importance of the role that NEST was fulfilling in ensuring automatic enrolment. We conceived that to be its core function and where we thought that it should focus. We therefore concluded that legislation to remove the constraints in 2017 was a balanced approach. I think that it is scheduled to happen on 1 April 2017, which is some two years away.
The noble Lord, Lord Bradley, raised the state aid situation. It is our understanding that we would have to reapply to vary the state aid consent that we have. Bearing in mind that it took us a year to get the original state aid clearance, that is clearly a significant period of time. We will double-check that in light of the comments made by the noble Lord, but I have had that confirmed while we have been debating this matter. We will reassess that, and I will write to the noble Lord and others who have contributed in the debate to confirm that position or otherwise.
Therefore, we consider two issues to be at the forefront of this. The first is that we want NEST to fulfil its core function. We believe it is doing that very well and do not want to disturb that. The second is that 2017 is only two and a bit years away, and we believe it could take a significant amount of time to vary the state aid consent, but we will have another look at that issue. In the mean time, given that I have undertaken to examine that, I ask the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Bradley: Once again, I am grateful to the Minister for his response and that, if there is lack of clarity over the state aid issue, he will look at it and write to me about the actual position, so that we can apply it to the amendment. I hope that he will be able to do that before Report, so that we may consider whether it is appropriate to pursue the matter further. In the light of his assurances on that point, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Schedule 2: Other amendments to do with Parts 1and 2
24: Schedule 2, page 63, line 19, at end insert—
“( ) in the substituted subsection (2)(a), for “hybrid scheme” substitute “shared risk scheme”;”
25: Schedule 2, page 64, line 8, at end insert—
“( ) For the definition of “defined benefits scheme” substitute—
““defined benefits scheme” has the meaning given by section 2 of the Pension Schemes Act 2014;”.”
26: Schedule 2, page 64, line 9, at end insert—
“““collective benefit” has the meaning given by section 8 of the Pension Schemes Act 2014;””
Schedule 2, as amended, agreed.