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Occupational Pensions

I do not understand the point that the Secretary of State has just made about the situation in 1997, when, of course, everything was not perfect in the occupational pensions world. Does he accept that it was precisely because the three new Labour leaders believed that pension funds were in an impregnable financial position that they thought that the pension funds could stand a £5 billion a year loss without anybody having anything to worry about? There has been a move away from direct benefit pensions elsewhere, because other problems have occurred for pensions everywhere. In this country, the avalanche out of defined benefit schemes into other types of schemes, or none at all, grotesquely exceeds anything in any other jurisdiction.