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Occupational Pensions

Obviously, by praising the Chancellor’s speech the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. David) is applying to him late in life for a job, perhaps as his Parliamentary Private Secretary. I wonder whether he would have made that same speech so willingly in 1997, when the decisions we are discussing were being taken; would he have stressed the benefits of this change in advance corporation tax that the Chancellor had sprung on the House? It is my contention that at that time nobody knew what its full effect would be. The Chancellor certainly did not come clean about it in the Chamber. It is good that he is now belatedly being held to account, simply because we happen to have the Treasury evidence, which came out after 10 years. The Chancellor’s remark that he welcomed the Freedom of Information Act 2000 was one of the most amusing comments that he has made in the Chamber, and I hope that it will be included in future dictionaries of quotations. He clung on to information that some of us had anticipated must have existed in the first place—he legally tried to hold it back until he went on a trip, to Afghanistan—namely that he overrode the advice that he had been given and that he knew what the effect of his decision would be, although I suspect that he did not realise how bad it would be. There is a pensions crisis, although I accept it is not caused entirely by the particular tax change that is at the centre of our debate—I shall come back to that point. There is a pensions crisis because people no longer have confidence in putting enough money aside for their retirement. Not only do they not feel that that is a justifiable saving, but they are unconvinced that the benefits of that saving will flow back to them when they have retired.