Pensions Bill

My Lords, I am glad that we have started in a reasonably consensual mode today and I hope that that is how it will be for most of the afternoon. This is a proper way to work together to improve the Bill and, like the noble Baroness, I thank the Minister for the full and frank discussion that we had last week on all aspects of the Bill. It was very helpful. Perhaps I may say how pleased we on these Benches are to see that he is still with us. He is a listening Minister and I hope that his new colleagues at the DWP will listen to him. I welcome Rosie Winterton to the position of Minister for Pension Reform. Obviously, it must be very difficult to have these changes so late on in a Bill but we look forward to continuing to improve it. Like the noble Baroness, I also thank the organisations that have been lobbying us and discussing these issues with us over the summer. They include many of the same representative organisations, which I shall not list again, but I should also like to thank individual companies—Legal & General and Norwich Union, in particular—for the helpful discussions that we have had. Legal & General, in particular, used rather a good phrase when we were talking through the detail of some of the qualifying earnings matters. It is getting some feedback and said, ““The trouble is that the DWP and pension scheme providers don’t speak quite the same language””. I am glad if communication is improving. We are broadly happy that progress is being made but, like the noble Baroness, we feel that there is a little further to go. I am not over-impressed with the argument that it is all right for big companies, with the attitude that you have the software and just have to run it to the end of the year. It is all right for big companies to check that no single employee is worse off but in the Bill we are talking about millions of small companies with five or 10 employees. They will not all be computerised and matters will not be so easy for them. We need to get out of a big company or big organisation mindset, if I can put it that way, when we look at practical problems of this kind. Having said that, I believe that the approach is right. I believe that we are moving forward and I hope that by the time we get to Third Reading there will be something on which we can all agree.