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Pensions Act 2004 (PPF Payments and FAS Payments) (Consequential Provisions) Order 2006

My Lords, I am not sure that I quite followed the reference by the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, to ““boring””, but in my case I certainly do not regard boring as a pejorative term. Indeed, the Government could do with being a lot more boring and a lot less frenetic in their activities, chopping and changing in all sorts of areas. Moving on to the orders—I intend to take every opportunity that I can to keep speaking up in Parliament for the 85,000 members of collapsed pension schemes who have been shamefully let down by this Government with their pitiful £20 million a year financial assistance scheme. The FAS is a cruel deception. Is the Minister aware that even the National Association of Pension Funds last week said:"““The government’s FAS is a half-hearted, inadequate patch-up job. There’s a problem getting confidence back into pensions, and the impact of leaving 60,000 people with next to nothing is considerable””." It added that the Government’s commitment of £20 million a year was ““vastly inadequate””, and a"““fudge to cheaply buy off Labour backbenchers””." The National Association of Pension Funds is the leading independent body in this country. How many people have now received payments from the FAS? The excellent Pensions Week, as part of its Campaign for Pensions Justice, reported on 23 January that at that stage only 13 people had actually received payments. What is the latest total? This Government loves targets. So how many people do they expect will have received payments from the financial assistance scheme by the end of June this year and how many more by the end of the year? We have no objection to the details of this order or to the PPF compensation cap uprating.