Speeches by Blackman.

“I want to ask the Minister why the amendment has been tabled. Have the regulators asked for it so that they can get the information they need, or has the provision been identified by the Government? Basically, what consultation is being done to ensure that the amendment makes sense and is doing what people need it to d…”

“I rise to support amendment 276. It is similar to some of the points that I brought up earlier, which were also brought up in the oral evidence session, about the consistency and existence of that pipeline and the fact that it needs to be there. Reviewing in advance of a decision being made on mandation would be the se…”

“Amendments 250 to 253, as well as Government amendment 113, which we will discuss later, clarify the word “innovation” and look at how best to define it. There are two different approaches from the Government and the Opposition to what innovation means. I raised the issue of defining innovation on Second Reading, so I …”

“Once this measure beds in—once we have people being moved to default benefit solutions, or those boxes and the solutions have been created—how will it be kept under review? Will there be a process for review five years down the line, when a significant number of people have been moved to default benefit solutions, to e…”

“It looks like these amendments came up because of conversations with the regulator, which is looking to ensure that it can use the powers that the Bill intends to create. This is not the first time we have had amendments that have been suggested by the regulator. I would appreciate it if the Minister could go away, and…”

“I have a brief comment on Government amendment 117. Because there were so many amendments, it was quite difficult to ensure that the Minister went through all of them with a fine-toothed comb. The explanatory statement for this one does not make any sense to me—it perhaps makes sense to other people. Reading the explan…”

“Thank you, Ms McVey—I was about to start by saying that I will not talk about clause 38; I will just talk about the technical amendments. I have made the point before about the significant number of amendments. I do not know why the Government chose to table this number of amendments rather than submit a new clause tha…”

“I am happy to support the Liberal Democrat amendment. I have already mentioned the Regulatory Policy Committee’s impact assessment—it considers the monitoring and evaluation plan to be weak, saying: “The policies are all due to be reviewed in 2030. More detailed plans are needed, outlining success metrics, reporting re…”

“My question was not dissimilar to the shadow Minister’s question on the amounts of the penalties—£10,000 for an individual and £100,000 in any other case. There is no delegated authority to raise it beyond those levels. There is an ability to set the amounts, provided they do not go above those. Would the process have …”

“I am now entirely confused. Can the Minister please clarify for all of us what the Bill actually does in terms of the consolidation?”

“If you will give me a bit of leeway, Mr Turner, I promise to speak only once on default pension benefit solutions. I might stray slightly outwith clause 42. I am looking for clarity from the Minister on default pension benefit solutions. We have heard a lot of concern about how communications cannot be made to members,…”

“I thank the Minister for that clarification. These are almost two different stages in the same process: we need to do the consolidation of the small pots right now, and then look at what we are going to do so that small pots will not ever exist and nobody will end up with a small pot, because we do one of the two optio…”

“I have just one more brief comment. It drives me completely mad that whoever is standing at that Dispatch Box seems to believe that they will be in government in perpetuity. Given that this is the second colour of Government I have faced across the Committee floor, it may be that the Minister and his Secretary of State…”

“There is possibly cross-party consensus that there is no perfect answer to this problem, but there are lots of wrong answers. If the value had been set at £100,000 or at £1, those would have been very wrong answers. I applaud the way the Liberal Democrats have approached this, by looking at the responses they have rece…”

“When questioned on Tuesday, the Minister talked about the issues that had been raised about intermediate ratings, and the possibility of intermediate points within intermediate ratings. It would be helpful if he could confirm from the Front Bench that he will take action to ensure that the negative consequences that we…”

“I have a similar question to the one I had earlier. We need to ensure that those responsible for generating the data are kept in the loop and that they have enough of a timeline to create the correct data. The Government must listen if they say, “We’re very sorry, but we can’t this bit of data in the way that the Gover…”

“I have a couple of questions on the small pots data platform. On Second Reading, I raised issues about the pensions dashboard and the fact that after a significant length of time, it has not yet appeared. I appreciate that lots of people have been doing lots of work on it, but we do not have it yet. It is vital that th…”

“Does the Minister have any hypothetical examples? I am not asking him to commit to anything being a prescribed condition, but just to give us some examples so that we have an idea.”

“I have a question on the definition of “dormant”. The clause states that a pension pot is “dormant” if no contributions have been made for 12 months and if “the individual has, subject to any prescribed exceptions, taken no step to confirm or alter the way in which the pension pot is invested.” I am concerned that that…”

“If the hon. Member for Wyre Forest can confirm that he does not intend the change to apply in Scotland, because we do not have strategic authorities, I am quite happy not to vote for or against it and to leave it to those who do have strategic authorities.”