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Occupational Pensions

My hon. Friend has identified a moot point. Opposition Members have gone very quiet, perhaps because there is quite a lot in what he has said. It is more than just a rumour or a suggestion; I believe that it may be based on hard fact, and I am sure that my hon. Friend’s intervention was based on sound knowledge. Some commentators, for whatever reason—I suspect that it is more to do with politics than with economics—appear to have changed their position on this issue. The shadow Chancellor, the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne), made a passing reference to Dr. Ros Altmann, although he did not mention her by name. The press have described her as being very critical of the 1997 decision, but I was interested to note that historically her view has been somewhat different. In evidence to a Select Committee back in March 2004, she made some very pertinent comments which were quite different from those attributed to her recently. Let me quote from the verbatim reports of that evidence session of March 2004. She clearly stated that the arguments that some had put forward to test the water were wrong because income was reduced by only about 0.9 per cent. She asserted that that was an insignificant amount. She said that the argument that some had put forward was"““simply trying to make a political point but is of negligible size in this debate in practice. Even if they still had the…relief, there would not have been enough in the funds to pay for pensions. I certainly do not want to be associated with any argument that says this problem was caused by the removal of this relief.?"