Pensions Bill

My Lords, I am perfectly happy to offer my noble friend the Government’s view on those amendments when we reach them. As regards the amendment we are discussing, I argue that temporary suspension is simply not the way to address this. It would compound a challenging issue. My noble friend rightly referred to the fact that people are building up increasingly bigger pots in DC schemes. If you project forward 20 or 30 years, particularly with auto-enrolment, that will increase substantially. However, in the second quarter of 2008, there were something like 114,000 annuity sales, nearly 40 per cent of which were for pots of less than £10,000 and only 13 per cent of which were for pots in excess of £50,000. Therefore, we are a long way from that situation at the moment. I am disappointed that when we debate this matter the focus of attention is on people at or around or approaching 75, whom I have sought to deal with. However, we have not discussed people who might be in more challenging circumstances—those who annuitise early because they need the income. Those people have very real deadlines driven by their economic circumstances. Frankly, I am more concerned about those people than those who have the options I have outlined. I think that the temporary suspension is the worst of all options that we face at the moment.