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Occupational Pensions

I begin by declaring an interest as a trustee of an occupational pension fund, and as a director of the associated principal employer. I want to congratulate my Front-Bench colleagues, for an eerily similar reason to that being used by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Mr. Simon) to attack them. Over the past 10 years, the Chancellor of the Exchequer must frequently have quietly congratulated himself on the relatively low amount of political pain that he has had to suffer for the huge amount of money that he has taken out of the occupational pension schemes in this country, and for the damage to which that has contributed during that period. I welcome the fact that a combination of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and the activities of The Times and of my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Front Bench has now brought the issue into sharp relief in the political debate. Those on the Conservative Front Bench should be warmly congratulated on that. It is worth reminding ourselves why it has taken so long for this issue to take off as a subject of political debate. As my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond) knows better than most, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) probably knows even better, anyone who tries to explain pensions issues in a political context fights an uphill battle. It is too easy for the issues surrounding pensions to degenerate into impenetrable jargon. That is precisely why the Chancellor chose this target in the privacy of the top-floor suite of the Grosvenor House hotel before the 1997 election. It also explains why he chose to present the reality of this tax increase on the pension funds in very delphic language during the 1997 Budget. If people make an issue sound complex, there are usually two explanations. One is that the speaker does not understand the subject; the other is that they have something to hide. The Chancellor has consistently made this subject sound complex, but not because he does not understand it. He is a very bright man; he understands it with absolute clarity. He has made it sound complex because he has had something to hide, and my Front-Bench colleagues are to be congratulated on at last revealing what he has spent 10 years hiding.