Pensions Bill

One would have to be stony-hearted not to be moved by the letters we have received and the deeply unhappy individual cases of which we are aware. But I want to be so insensitive as to raise a number of questions of principle and of practice and to ask my noble friend, when he comes to wind up, to comment on them. What do the Government consider is the place of the principle of caveat emptor in pensions policy? Clearly, the Opposition do not think that it has a place. But is it not the case that we are looking at the consequence of business failures, of mismanagement of private funds by trustees? Is it not also the case that these unhappy and unfortunate pensioners would have contracted out of SERPS? Where is the line to be drawn between personal and private responsibility and the responsibility of the state? We know that it is the state’s bedrock duty to provide social security so that people do not have to eke out an old age in destitution, but on what principle do we judge what more the state ought to do? Can any reasonable person have supposed that the state was always going to underwrite the whole ofthe private pensions system? I think not. Clearly, literature was produced by the department which, unfortunately, gave people the impression that that might be the case. But will my noble friend tell the Committee on whose watch that literature was produced? Who were the Government and the Pensions Minister who let it out? What was the cost of that error, and what is the price tag on the ombudsman’s recommendation and the High Court’s ruling? How many schools and hospitals could have been paid for with that money? The Government have chosen to be generous, and I am glad that they have. I hope that my noble friend will remind those listening to this debate of how many billions of pounds the Government have set aside for the financial assistance scheme, to which the noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott, referred as a ““miserable little scheme””. The noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, gave us some figures, referring to provision of £8 billion over 30 years with a net present value of £1.9 billion, but he clearly thought that that was not enough. Howdo we establish the appropriate limit for public expenditure, which is after all not an inexhaustibletap with which we can wash away all varieties of misfortune? Do the parties opposite consider that those who have lost their savings and pensions expectations through the collapse of Equitable Life should also be rescued? Who should be brought in? Where do we draw the line? How do we establish some principles in this regard? Once upon a time, the Conservative Party understood that there had to be limits to public expenditure, but compassionate Cameronism gushes pound notes like an incontinent geyser. We are accustomed to the fact that the Liberal Democrats spend a penny on income tax and spend it againand again in their fairytale economics, and the Conservative Party used to deride them for that—but now they are ““shoulder to shoulder””. That I think was the expression that we heard.