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Pensions

My Lords, I am glad that he does not associate himself with any such sentiment. The noble Lord, Lord Desai, mentioned the fallacy that a trillion pounds is somehow a liability. I used to be a member of the Royal Commission on the Distribution of Income and Wealth. We considered national wealth statistics with and without pension liability, but one has to have both sides of the balance sheet. There is no immediate liability to pay out a trillion pounds. If one works out the logic of national income accounting—national wealth and income—my noble friend Lord Desai is fundamentally correct. I hope that at some stage people will get that into their heads and not produce this false comparison of apples and oranges.