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Occupational Pensions

I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman can afford to do so, but some of my constituents have been affected by failed schemes. Arcolectric has a failed scheme. Mayflower is based in Guildford, but its failed scheme also affects constituents of mine. Those people are extremely concerned about their futures, and I hope that the Government will tomorrow adopt the Opposition’s amendment on this issue. However, that is not the only issue that I wish to address. There is a pensions crisis and there is a savings crisis and we must do something about that. How we address those problems is perhaps not a matter for this debate, but I hope that something constructive will come out of it, because I am extremely concerned as the long-term prospect is that the state will not be able to provide sufficient for people in their retirement. People will live longer. Therefore, they will have costs to meet, not least in terms of nursing home care. In those circumstances, we desperately need there to be a thriving private sector pensions industry. In 1997, it was clearly being rumoured that the Government were thinking of making changes. The hon. Member for Coventry, North-West (Mr. Robinson) made an open speech in which he was also affable—although he did not perhaps always mean to be so—and in which he revealed the truth: secret work was going on at that time to work out how to get more money from the taxpayer without them necessarily realising it. That is effectively what he said in his book, and it is what he has said in the Chamber today. There is nothing wrong with that in the sense that Governments occasionally have to consider how to raise tax revenues. All Governments have a responsibility to do that. It is always better—in the long term, it is better for the reputation of the Government—if they do so overtly rather than covertly, but the exercise undertaken by the hon. Member for Coventry, North-West was clearly covert. Again, I do not necessarily criticise him for being covert before a general election. Political parties do not always put all their policies in the shop window. What was damaging was that the introduction in the Budget was covert, glossed over and spun so that nobody understood its implications. However, the advice given to the Chancellor from several different quarters suggested what the effect might be.