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Pensions Bill

Yes, I am, and I express my appreciation to the Government for what I can only describe as a character-building experience for my wife and me. By dawn, at seven o’clock the next morning when we had resolved the matter, my wife was convinced that she had married into a madhouse, and, indeed, she had in terms of what the law was bringing about. During that last night, the trustees lost their nerve in relation to the British pension scheme becausethe pension beneficiaries of the British company threatened to take proceedings against the trustees personally if they did not succeed in getting the company into the lifeboat, which they could do only by bankrupting the British company. So, by insisting on the bankruptcy of the British company, they lost the benefit of some 1,500 jobs and the potential value to our economy of any future recovery that that company might have produced. Therefore, there was a complete distortion of the priorities that should have flowed from the decision processes forced through by this action. Amendment No. 69 would remove that problem so that it could never occur again. I am sure that there will be many variations of it but the demands that it imposes on trustees are too unpredictable and completely irresponsible. Therefore, I wholly support the amendment.