Pensions Bill

My Lords, I have not finished my response yet, but it is the noble Lord’s right to move whatever amendments he wishes at Third Reading. I simply hang on to the point that it may be easy to describe the circumstances one is seeking to address, but that does not necessarily immediately extrapolate into an understanding of the scale of the problem and the best way to solve it. I stress to my noble friend that this is work in progress; work is going on. I was especially going to say to her that, over the summer, there has been consideration of transfers out of personal accounts. It has been agreed that we will allow transfers out of personal accounts at the age of 55 for the purposes of decumulation. That is a contribution, although I accept that it does not deal with the totality of the issue. My noble friend also asked about the missing year. Given that we are fixed on the annual contribution of £3,600 uprated by earnings until we get to the review in 2017, the scope for dealing with the missing years will be in the headroom that that already provides, but there is no proposal further to change arrangements before that review. As we discussed in Committee, that £3,600 level provides a reasonable amount of headroom, certainly to pick up one year. My noble friend Lord Lea asked whether we have to specify in the Bill whether other provisions are in Clauses 13 or 14. I do not think that that follows. It is always an issue when the Government give assurances. Some want it firmly implanted in the Bill; some do not. It is a judgment in each case. Oppositions generally press us to put everything in the Bill; for some reason they do not trust the Government's word—is that not very strange? There is no logical reason why, just because it is in those earlier provisions, it should be in this one. My noble friend talked about DB schemes, buyouts, enhanced transfer values and cash baits, as did the noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott, and the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard. I would like to take that issue away and get some early focus on it. Perhaps we can invite those noble Lords who have contributed to the debate to come to a meeting so that we can scope out precisely what we are dealing with here. If the noble Lord has a letter that he is happy to share with us, that would also be helpful. Let us get the issue looked at again and understand the scale of the problem. I hope that that has dealt with the issue. I suppose that in all of that, the noble Baroness may have gleaned that I would prefer that she withdraw her amendment, but I hope that I have given her clearly the assurances that she wanted. I have not addressed the issue of transfers-in, where we identified just two incidences where we would support those uninvested pots and pension credit on pension-sharing. Apart from that, we contemplate no other provisions.