Pensions Bill

I shall speak for only two minutes, as I know that other hon. Members with constituency interests also want to contribute to the debate. However, I shall begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Minister on his statement today and on the extension of the FAS scheme. The House has it in its power to decide to extend the number of people covered by the scheme from the 8,000 announced by the Minister today to include all those who have saved yet been cheated of their pensions. Because the Minister is so talented I plead with my hon. Friends not to be beguiled by his abilities if he assures us that we should put things off to another day because there will be another inquiry. My two minutes are to remind the House that in 2002, when the stories began to surface, I introduced a private Member’s Bill. The Government said, ““We must not rush things; we must think about them and hold inquiries, so we must block your Bill?. The Bill provided that we should use unclaimed assets, so they began by saying, ““We don’t know how much there is?. They continued with, ““There is not much?, followed by, ““Perhaps there is a bit more, but we don’t own it?. They then said, ““Perhaps we will bring in a levy but we’ll put it into another scheme—a foundation?. The message that I want to give to my hon. Friends is crucial, and was set out by my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright) earlier: we have it in our power today to make a decision to put an end to the gross injustice that decent people, who have saved and done everything required of them, have been cheated of their inheritance. We should make that decision for justice’s sake, but we should also make it for the Government’s sake, because they still seem unable to realise that as long as that sore continues to fester, they will find it impossible to kick-start the savings habit in our community. Why should one save when one knows that all too many people who did precisely that at the Government’s behest now feel themselves cheated? Today, we can stop that cheating by supporting new clause 41 and I hope we shall do so.