Superannuation Bill

Debate between John Hemming and Lord Maude of Horsham

Wednesday 13th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

Absolutely and unequivocally, yes. I shall talk a little about the process we have been through and where we are in the negotiations. I say clearly to the hon. Gentleman and to the House that if it is at all possible to achieve a fully negotiated settlement that is affordable and fair to the taxpayer and that meets the concerns of all the unions, we will certainly try to achieve such an agreement with all six unions. I shall say a little more about that in a while, but the answer is definitively yes.

[John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)]

In Committee, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) made some good points about individual exceptions in which even the terms proposed in the negotiations with the trade unions might be unfair to individuals who have been through particular hardship. Does the Minister agree that that can be resolved only through negotiation and that aiming to resolve it through legislation would be a mistake?

[Mr Maude]

My hon. Friend is completely right: there has to be flexibility. That is why I have always said that the caps imposed by the Bill are not right for a permanent system because they do not provide that flexibility. The scheme that has been brokered between the negotiators for five of the unions would provide much greater flexibility and would, I think, meet the concerns that he raises.

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[John Hemming]

Also in Committee, Dusty Amroliwala, the civil servant responsible for handling the scheme, said that he would have advised any Government to take that approach to break the legislative logjam. He also said that there had been no estimates of what the Bill would save because there was no expectation that what it proposed would be the end result. In that sense, does the Minister agree that this is part of the process of breaking the legislative logjam?

[Mr Maude]

Yes, indeed. If the result of the process that we have been through with the Bill is that it makes a negotiated settlement more likely, that will be extremely beneficial. I do not want the outcome of all this to be that the existing scheme remains in place with the crude caps that the Bill imports. What we want is a new, successor scheme, and there is now a serious prospect of that being achieved. If it can be achieved with the support and agreement of all six civil service unions, no one will be more delighted than I. However, if we have to go down the path of having a new scheme that is supported by fewer unions, that would still be better because it would mean that many of the concerns that have been raised would be met better than by the Bill. That would be infinitely better than the current scheme remaining in place, as it is simply unaffordable and unsustainable, as the previous Government openly accepted.

Superannuation Bill

Debate between John Hemming and Lord Maude of Horsham

Tuesday 7th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

No. The effect of the legislation will be identical on all civil servants. Under the Bill, the cap would apply uniformly to civil servants. I shall come in a moment to the negotiations that are going on in parallel, because that will deal exactly with the hon. Gentleman’s point.

[John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)]

Obviously we do not want to make civil servants redundant. Does the Bill not make it less likely that lower-paid civil servants will lose their jobs, so in 10 years’ time they will still be employed within the civil service?

[Mr Maude]

My hon. Friend is exactly right and puts his finger on an important point. Because it is so disproportionately expensive under the current scheme to make redundant long-serving and high-paid civil servants, instead of one civil servant who earns 10 times the average—there are some—losing their job, 10 or more lower-paid civil servants might lose their jobs to save the same amount of money. We are seeking to address exactly that issue.

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[Mr Maude]

I am reluctant to start conducting those negotiations in public. It would be regarded by the unions, which I think are engaged in good faith in these discussions—certainly, all the indications are that they are engaged in good faith in these private discussions in order to achieve an agreed outcome—as bad faith were we to start to explore them here. All I would say at this stage is that we completely and genuinely understand the need for additional protection for lower-paid workers, of whom there are many in the civil service, and we will seek to achieve that.

[John Hemming]

Does the Minister agree that the difficulty is that the Government need to act and cannot allow one of six trade unions simply to veto all changes, and that if the Government are therefore to put something through, they need negotiating room to offer something better in the negotiations? Obviously, this Bill will not be as good as a final deal that could be agreed with the trade unions.

[Mr Maude]

That is completely right. My hon. Friend puts his finger precisely on the point. Our view is that one union cannot be allowed to prevent necessary reform of a scheme that is unsustainable and unaffordable—and, of course, that is precisely the view taken by the last Government. The order laid by the right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood, which came into effect, I think, in April this year—before it was rapidly quashed by the judicial review sought by the Public and Commercial Services Union—was made on the basis that one union could not be allowed to hold up the necessary process of reform. However, I stress again that we seek genuinely to negotiate additional protection for the lower paid.