Pensions Bill

The bottom line is this: the official Opposition support the direction of travel of these reforms, although we have worries about some of the technical details and aspects of the personal accounts on which I have touched. However, fundamentally, we need to restore confidence in the pensions system as a whole. The man in the saloon bar who is not saving for his retirement, yet should be, needs to have confidence that when he locks his money away for 40 years, it will still be there at the end of that time to provide him with a decent pension. Ministers need to go back to the drawing board and address the way in which the problems that I have touched on are dealt with so that we can clear the ground and the personal accounts system can have the best possible start in life, instead of being encumbered by the baggage of recent history. Having said that, we wish the Bill a safe passage to the Lords and look forward to it coming back in due course in an improved form.