Pensions Bill

My Lords, I will respond briefly to those comments. Amendments are about to be moved to the amendment, but I should like to say that I am grateful for the support and encouragement from all three noble Lords who have spoken. I add my thanks to the staff of the DWP, who worked extensively and diligently on moving from where we are. The noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott, called it our macho moment. I am not sure that I would fully subscribe to that. However, they have done a substantial job but have engaged fully with stakeholders, which has been the key to moving this forward. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, posed a very real point about what comfort there is in the regulator's code. The regulator's code, as I said, has evidential value and the regulator must always have regard to it, although the regulator would always and must act on a case-by-case basis. In the Government’s view, it would be difficult to argue that the regulator could reasonably act beyond the code unless there were frankly exceptional circumstances. However, the regulator tells us that it is unable to think of any circumstances in which it would want to act outside the code. I hope that that is at least a degree of reassurance to the noble Lord. On Question, amendment agreed to.