Part 1: Collective Money Purchase Benefits Members’ Rights Section 24: Rules about modifying schemes
The subsisting rights provisions ensure that members of occupational pension schemes have a legal right to their benefit entitlement. In a collective money purchase scheme, members will not have a right to a certain value of CMPB, but will have a right to a variable amount or rate of benefit calculated according to scheme rules and paid as a pension income for life. This section amends the existing legislation around subsisting rights in sections 67 and 67A of the Pensions Act 1995 (1995 Act) to ensure that rights under collective money purchase schemes are included.
	Subsection (2)(a) inserts new subsection (1A) into section 67 of the 1995 Act which makes any exercise of a power to make a prohibited modification void. Subsection (2)(b) amends subsection (2)(a)(i) of section 67 of the 1995 Act to make all regulated modifications (i.e. protected modifications and detrimental modifications) to a collective money purchase scheme voidable unless the consent requirements are satisfied. Subsection (2)(e) inserts a new subsection (3A) to section 67 of the 1995 Act which provides for regulations to disapply the subsisting rights provisions in prescribed cases. This would, for example, enable the Secretary of State to make regulations if needed, to remove any ambiguity around the application of the subsisting rights provisions to a CMPB.
	Subsections (3) and (4) amend Section 67A of the 1995 Act so as to define "prohibited modification" as a modification of a pension scheme which would or might result in a member or survivor who is entitled to non-money purchase benefits under a scheme having those benefits converted to or replaced by collective money purchase benefits.
	Subsection (5) amends section 67A of the 1995 Act to introduce the concept of "relevant transformation of a subsisting right". A relevant transformation of a subsisting right is a protected modification which means that it is voidable unless the consent requirements are satisfied. Subsection (6) inserts subsection (3A) and defines "relevant transformation of a subsisting right" as (a) conversion of non-money purchase benefits into any form of money purchase benefits other than a CMPB; (b) conversion of other money purchase benefits into CMPB; and (c) conversion of CMPB into other money purchase benefits.
	Subsection (7) amends section 67A(4) of the 1995 Act to exclude "prohibited modifications" from the definition of "detrimental modification" for the purposes of the subsisting rights provisions.
	Subsection (8) amends subsection (9) of section 67A of the 1995 Act, which provides that references in the subsisting rights provisions to scheme rules include legislative provisions which override the scheme rules, so as to include such provisions which are in this Act.