Pensions Bill

I am just getting into my stride, but I will come to that at the end. The issue throughout has been whether we could make a clear difference between companies that were affected before the financial assistance scheme came into place and companies that are still trading today. We would not want to open up a loophole—I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would not want to do so—whereby perfectly healthy companies could dump their scheme on the taxpayer, but I will come to that issue later. Given that sympathy, the Government have always sought a satisfactory solution for those who have suffered, but there has always been a debate about at what level that assistance should be. As the ombudsman herself made clear,"““it was the sole responsibility of Government or that the taxpayer should pick up the tab was not what I said... I did not say, ‘Write a blank cheque’, but organise a remedy?." The Government have organised a remedy, but let us be clear about why have we had to do so. As the European Court of Justice found during our proceedings in Committee, the then Tory Government failed to implement the 1980 insolvency directive and to protect people’s pensions. As the judicial review found, the 1996 leaflet published by the then Tory Government was misleading and maladministrative. In 1995, when the Labour party in opposition proposed creating a pensions lifeboat, the now shadow Foreign Secretary, then the Pensions Minister, opposed it, and this Labour Government had to introduce the PPF. The hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond) said during his winding-up speech yesterday that there was no need to introduce a pension lifeboat in 1995. If he and the Conservative party had taken our advice, there would be no need to introduce one now, and we needed to wait for a Labour Government to do so. The Government had previously defended that Tory record, but those court cases have made it clear that those actions were wrong, and we have therefore reconsidered the level of the financial assistance scheme. By contrast, the Conservative Front Benchers have always resisted putting more taxpayers’ money into FAS. The hon. Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Waterson) said in the House that"““at no stage have the official Opposition ever committed taxpayers’ money to this issue above and beyond what the Government have already committed.?—[Official Report, 27 June 2006; Vol. 448, c. 175.]" We look forward to finding out whether they will support the money that we are putting in, but there is a very clear difference for people between the Conservative amendments, which would try to find money by taking it from one set of pensioners and giving it to another, and our amendments, which will guarantee money from the taxpayer to get to at least 80 per cent. of people.