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Occupational Pensions

I am grateful to the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement, but I fear that his response to the ombudsman’s report will have created even greater anger and an even greater sense of betrayal among those people who have lost their pensions. As I understand it, the essence of his statement is that he believes that the Government have got more or less everything right and that the ombudsman has got more or less everything wrong. With respect, his Department has had a chance to put those points to the ombudsman over the past few months, and I remind him of her conclusion:"““I have found that maladministration was a significant contributory factor in the creation of financial loss . . . Nothing in the DWP’s submissions persuades me otherwise.””" As the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond) has pointed out, paragraph 7.26 of the ombudsman’s report states:"““Parliament has decided that it is my role—and not that of any party to a complaint—to determine what constitutes maladministration””." If the Government are going to trample over the ombudsman’s report, what is the point in having a parliamentary ombudsman and giving her those responsibilities? I hope that Committees of this House, including the Public Administration Committee, will take up the way in which the DWP has dealt with the report. Does the Secretary of State agree that those people who have lost their pensions will now feel doubly betrayed, not only because of what originally happened, but because of the way in which the Government have dealt with the report, which comprehensively condemns the Government and states that they provided information that was"““inaccurate, incomplete, unclear and inconsistent””?" Is the defence in the DWP response to the ombudsman’s report—that many people will not have bothered to read those leaflets or that those who have read them will not have paid any attention to them—good enough? One wonders why the Government bother to distribute such leaflets, if people are not supposed to read them or pay attention to them. The Secretary of State’s statement was peppered with the excuse that people should have read the small print in the leaflets, but that is the approach of a dodgy second-hand car dealer, which one would not expect from a Secretary of State charged with regulating such matters. On cost, I share the concern expressed by the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge about the £15 billion figure that the Prime Minister has been waving around, and I want a clear commitment that the Secretary of State will put an explanation in the Library. I also want a clear commitment that the Secretary of State is not going to fob off people with a token increase in the FAS, when a more substantive measure, such as extending the protections in the Pension Protection Fund to people who are currently losing out in relation to the ombudsman’s report and the existing FAS, is clearly needed. Will he tell us the cost of such action? Is that not precisely the type of expenditure that should fall to the contingency reserve? Given that this Government can find billions of pounds to fund an unjustified war in Iraq, surely they can find the money out of the reserve to fund such compensation. As a Minister told the House of Commons in 2000:"““We are aware of the importance of protecting members’ rights . . . If we cannot do that, they have no one else to look to””.—[Official Report, 3 April 2000; Vol. 366, c. 765.]" What has changed? Why do Ministers now say that they are not responsible for protecting those rights and that members must look only to employers or trustees? Surely that approach not only betrays those people who have lost their pensions, but undermines the Government strategy to encourage millions more people to take up second pensions. The ombudsman, who obviously has a sense of irony, has entitled her report, ““Trusting in the Pensions Promise””. Does the Secretary of State understand that if he deals with the ombudsman’s report in that way, people will not trust this Government’s pensions policy?