During the Second Reading Debate, Steve Webb said:

There is a raft of other measures in the Bill which I will not go through in detail, but I shall pick up on two other issues. The first concerns the trustees of the schemes. Like other hon. Members, I meet regularly with retired members of occupational pension schemes*. They feel that they are excluded from the running of the occupational pensions on which they depend. One of the things that they value enormously is trustee rights—retired members drawing pensions being entitled to serve as trustees.

The Government considered two options for choosing trustees of occupational pension schemes. They rejected the option known as "fair and open". It is strange that the Government rejected the fair and open selection of trustees for occupational pension schemes. That makes me rather nervous. Retired members say that they want to have a say about the scheme that is as much theirs as anybody else's. They have no mechanism for contacting the electorate—the members of the scheme—and there ought at least to be a fair and open method of selecting trustees. The Government have rejected that for fear it would be bureaucratic and for fear of "vexatious scheme members complaining". Scheme members get vexed if they think they are not being listened to. I hope the Secretary of State will review that decision. It is important that workers, deferred members and retired members are properly represented in a fair and open way. I am not convinced that that is the case.

* Steve Webb listened to our experiences at the COPAS AGM on 20th May 2003

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