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Occupational Pensions

I will give way to the hon. Gentleman in a moment. He was very patient in waiting for the Chancellor to give way, and made a terribly telling intervention. I look forward to another one, but may I first deal with the point about the official advice that we received? There were, as the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe correctly said, a range of views in the Treasury and in the Inland Revenue, which were the two principal Departments giving advice. Initially, the Inland Revenue was dubious about the figures that we had worked out in opposition—only the Treasury computer held all the information needed to achieve an up-to-date and accurate estimate—because it had looked at the problem before, and the numbers were nowhere near as favourable to the overall proposition of the three interlinked changes as was later the case. We had to wait about two weeks until the Inland Revenue came back, thoroughly in agreement with the proposals that we had evolved. Indeed, the person who led for the Inland Revenue said that it was something that he had wanted to do for many years.