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Pensions Bill

Perhaps the hon. Lady will let me answer her first question before she seeks to ask another. I hope in this debate to get Ministers to establish whether the Government, while recognising all the difficulty that there is and the impossibility of doing anything more in the short term, none the less harbour an aspiration in the medium to long term, when it becomes possible, to reduce means-testing further; or do they, as some Opposition Members suspect, think that a level of means-testing of between 30 and 40 per cent. is a desirable status quo that they would want to preserve in the long term? I simply seek to establish that we are all on the same page in respect of the long-term wish list.