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Pensions Bill

At Second Reading I was rather dubious about the benefits of raising the age at which you could take annuities, but the more I have listened to what has been said this afternoon, the more convinced of them I have become. We have the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, on side, as it were. I have been through the same procedure with her on one or two other occasions, when I was told that my amendment, which will come up later, had no basis of justification. But now that we have heard from her about all the benefits that would arise from this measure, I am even more convinced. There will still be a pot, albeit a discriminatory figure, of some £233,000 for a woman who retires, compared with some £240,000 that an equivalent man would receive. Nevertheless, it is a lot of money and, as we have heard, it is highly likely that the sum will grow with inflation. If we can delay payment until as late as age 85, it is possible that by then no one will be able to argue that the gap between men and women has not closed in every sense; almost certainly, the ages at which men and women die will be closer together.For those reasons, I now very much support the amendment, not least because it will contribute a little to the arguments that I shall advance later.