Pensions Bill

The Minister is absolutely wrong. He knows as well as everyone else in the House that unclaimed assets are available. The Government used to claim that unclaimed assets did not exist, but they have now discovered them, and the Chancellor has started looking at them for various purposes. What we have said is that the Government should make a loan available to the lifeboat fund to enable it to start paying out immediately. The process of collecting unclaimed assets, which would enable that loan to be repaid, would then begin. It is ridiculous for the Minister to suggest that the loan would need to be £600 million; he has just explained, in the context of the financial assistance scheme, that the scheme would not have to be pre-funded. It can be a pay-as-you-go scheme.