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Occupational Pensions

May I make a little more progress? I will happily give way when the hon. Gentleman has something about which to ask a question. Pensions were well funded in 1997. We know that because when the Chancellor introduced the tax, one reason that he gave was that they were over-funded—he thought that they had too much money. Now, the deficits are measured in billions of pounds. I have asked the Library for the figures, and it puts the gross deficit shortfalls of pension funds at some £76 billion, which is a turnaround from surplus to deficit that is commensurate with the net present value of the £5 billion a year taken from pension funds and its impact on the value of those funds’ assets. The Chancellor had the cheek to suggest that my hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor needs a lesson about the value of assets, but it is he who needs the lesson. What is important is whether assets exceed liabilities, which was the case in 1997. Now, the liabilities of pension funds exceed the assets. That is the Chancellor’s record, which he must answer for, and the lesson that he needs to be taught. We were told then, and we knew well, that occupational pension funds were secure. Robert Maxwell had delivered a blow to confidence, but that blow was enormous precisely because up to that point no significant public company had ever gone into bankruptcy while being unable to meet the liabilities of its pension funds. Such pension funds were sufficiently well founded that even if the company did not survive, the pension fund did, or if the funds were underfunded, they were met by the resources of companies. When I faced the Maxwell pension crisis, I asked officials, ““What normally happens in such cases?? They said, ““This has never happened before?, so secure were we. Now it happens all too often, and all too many companies have failed leaving deficits in their pension funds. Hence the amendments that Conservative Front Benchers will introduce tomorrow to the Pensions Bill, when Opposition and Government Members will have an opportunity to try to make good the deficits and help the pensioners who are now caught in an occupational pensions system that is no longer as secure as it was. The Chancellor has mentioned £8 billion being made available, albeit over 60 years, which is a measure of the crisis that he has created.