Pensions Bill

I was going to come on to this point later, but I will deal with it now because I have been asked about it twice. My hon. Friend has campaigned on the matter long and persuasively and brought a delegation to see me. The Public Administration Committee has raised the matter, too. We have always been clear that we wanted to ensure that we did not create a loophole, as I said to the hon. Member for Angus (Mr. Weir). I am delighted to be able to tell my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Betts) that we can announce today that we will further extend the FAS to cover members of schemes that began winding up between 1 January 1997 and 5 April 2005—I believe that that covers the Tinsley Bridge scheme—when a compromise agreement is in place and when enforcing the debt against the employer would have forced the employer into insolvency. We estimate that that will benefit an additional 8,000 members of some 15 schemes.