Pensions Bill

I will do so happily, provided that the hon. Member for Yeovil also tells us what he would do about the 80 per cent. of people who, in 2050, would be getting more than £119. If the hon. Gentleman wants to tell us what he would do about people who got more than that amount because of disability or carers premiums or their state second pension—if he wants to tell the public that his plan is to take that money away from them—we will be happy to put that information in the Library. We are very happy to put it in the Library anyway, but I was trying yet again, rather pathetically, to get the hon. Gentleman to tell us what his policy is. The other way to reduce means-testing, of course, is to take money off poor people. The Tories seem to be saying that they do not want to increase the basic state pension, but they want to reduce the level of means-testing. The only way they could do that is by taking money off poor people, and I do not think that that is what they are planning to do. I am happy to let the hon. Member for Eastbourne intervene on me if he wants to. If that really is the Tories’ policy we are happy to debate it with them. Otherwise, the House will have to conclude that they want to make a noise about means-testing in general, without having any proposal to change what the Government are doing. We are happy to have that debate. We think that our proposals strike the right balance between enabling people to save for themselves and providing a safety net for them to fall back on—a safety net that has lifted 2 million people out of pensioner poverty since 1997. Amendment No. 7 would require the delivery authority to publish analysis of the interaction of means-testing with personal accounts as well as plans for the delivery of generic financial information. That would place an unnecessary extra pressure on the delivery authority in its initial stages by requiring it to carry out extensive and complex analysis in a short time and to duplicate some work already being undertaken in other areas. The Department for Work and Pensions and other experts will be providing much of the information that the hon. Members for Yeovil and for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey are after. Indeed, we plan to invite them to a further series of seminars to discuss the information base over the next few decades.