Postal Services Bill beefed up to safeguard RMPP

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The Postal Services Bill has been amended in the House of Lords to safeguard the Royal Mail Pension Plan if the scheme is broken up in future.

The bill - which provides for the Royal Mail to be relieved of its £10.3bn pensions deficit (PP Online, 13 January) - had its third reading in the House of Lords yesterday.

Introducing the amendment, Conservative peer Baroness Wilcox reassured peers that the bill did not give the government the power to split the RMPP into separate schemes.

"However, in the fullness of time it is possible that the businesses might wish to alter the pension arrangements by transferring a section of the RMPP into a new stand-alone arrangement," she said.

"Any such change would need to meet the safeguards provided under statute and under the scheme rules."

She explained the amendment would "future-proof" the information-sharing provisions in Clause 24 of the bill by extending them to cover any separate schemes in the event they are split off from the main scheme.

Clause 24 sets out a legal gateway to facilitate data sharing between the government scheme, the RMPP and the employer of the RMPP members.

The move was urged on the government by the Hooper Review which branded the Royal Mail's pensions deficit "unsustainable" (PP Online, 10 September, 2010).

The amended bill will now be sent back to the House of Commons - which passed the bill in January - where it is scheduled to be debated on 9 June.


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