Pension Schemes Bill [ Lords ] (First sitting)

Karen Buck Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 3rd November 2020 Public Bill Committees

As my hon. Friend has just pointed out, the position among pension trustee boards is a great deal worse. There are not yet any trustees of CDC schemes, which would be addressed by my amendment. I do not know whether it has been announced who the trustees of the Royal Mail scheme will be, and I certainly have not seen that list, but as we debate the ground rules for trustees of CDC schemes, there are good reasons for ensuring that we do not end up, in this part of the pensions world, in the position we are in with pension trustee boards more generally. I hope that those who are looking at the make-up of trustee boards more generally will take a leaf out of the tenor of the discussion that we are having.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

I ask my right hon. Friend to confirm my understanding, which is that when we talk about diversity, we are not simply talking about it being a good thing to have a range of different experiences and backgrounds; all the evidence from across the commercial sector is that diversity increases performance because of the range of perspectives that it brings to bear.

[Stephen Timms]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. She and I took part in a debate on a similar issue around 10 years ago, on the Welfare Reform Bill. She is right on this point, and that is an argument that I want to come to in a moment.

I hope the approach that I am advocating will be applied to other pension trustee boards in the UK in due course, because according to a report on diversity published in March by the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association, which we used to call the National Association of Pension Funds, 83% of pension scheme trustees are male; 50% of chairs of trustee boards are over 60; a third of all trustees are over 60, while only 2.5% are under 30; 25% of pension schemes have trustee boards that are entirely male; and only 5% of schemes have a majority of female trustees. This is a particularly stark picture if we look at the make-up of pension scheme trustee boards at the moment.

As the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association comments:

“It seems clear that occupational pension scheme trustee boards have generally not implemented robust diversity policies as effectively as FTSE 100 boards”.