I want to register my abhorrence at the use of the guillotine on this very important Bill. As the Minister himself has acknowledged it is an extremely complex and detailed Bill requiring as many as 14 pages of an explanatory memorandum. Time is clearly needed to tease out all the issues so that no mistakes will result from rushing through this Bill and we can be guaranteed a good Bill. It is not acceptable that we should guillotine such a complex Bill so that we can only cover the bare minimum on the sections.
It is important to bear in mind that this Bill is addressing the organising and regulating of £10 billion worth of funds in pension schemes, which are accumulating at the rate of £500 million per annum. We are talking about huge sums of money and there is no reason not to give it as much attention as it is entitled to in the Houses of Parliament. Having registered that objection, I will move on to the amendment.
It is interesting that Deputy Jacob, in a report of 31 May on this same Bill, said that far from being a watered down exercise, as suggested by me, this Bill was a model of the democratic procedure with which this House should feel very comfortable and satisfied. I see nothing democratic about a Bill only a small fraction of which will be debated and voted on in this House. Maybe Deputy Jacob will take the opportunity to eat his own words at a later stage.
The preservation of benefits is a very important part of the Bill. It is important that we recognise that when the National Pensions Board produced their report in 1987 they made certain recommendations. We have also to recognise that the recommendations they made were not decided overnight. There was a lot of serious discussion with various professionals right across the board from trade unions to pension scheme managers, to the financial institutions and they deliberated for quite a long time before they made their recommendations. It is, therefore, very unsatisfactory that the Minister should have produced such a watered down Bill.
Let me refresh the Minister's memory about what was actually said in 1987 by that very competent 20 person committee that comprised the National Pensions Board. My motion is in essence reiterating what they said at that time. At page 56 of their report, under section 5 (12) (c) they said that in the cases of members under age 25 at leaving the minimum qualifying service should be five years; for each year over 25 years of age the minimum qualifying period should be reduced by one year to a minimum of two years. For example, a member aged 28 or over at leaving should only require two years of qualifying service to qualify for preserved benefit.
I know the Minister will produce arguments to say that this would create knock of effects for the funding of the scheme if these recommendations were to be suddenly implemented but we are not asking for anything to be suddenly implemented. This report is three years old at least. The insurance and financial institutions knew about, and were party to the debate that has been going on for longer than three years. We are talking about adding a five year qualification period, two years of which would have to be two years after the date of the intended implementation, 1 January 1991. Three years have gone by since the report of the National Pensions Board was produced and we are talking about another two years after 1 January 1991 which brings us to five years, and I am not sure how long prior to the printing of this report these deliberations had gone on. It is safe to say that in a six year period the industry had had time to make any minor alterations that might have been needed in order to implement what was being recommended by the National Pensions Board.
It is interesting to look at what has happened in England. The National Pensions Board in their report said that in the UK they introduced compulsory preservation of pension rights in their 1973 Social Welfare Act. That is quite a while ago. That became effective in 1975. This made it compulsory for approved pensions schemes to provide preserved benefits calculated in accordance with the normal scheme formula for members who leave after completing five years service and are over 26 years of age — that was in 1973. Subsequently further legislation removed the age stipulation and the five year period has now been reduced to two years. All this had happened in England three to four years ago. I see no reason for not accepting this amendment to section 27. It clearly conforms with what was expressed by the National Pensions Board.