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Pensions Bill

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken. Apart from the Front-Benchers, every speaker was in favour of our amendment. Even the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, was sympathetic to Amendment No. 5. I wish to add two or three minor points of clarification. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, for his support. He did not think the people on the commission should be party nominees. Perhaps I was not very clear on that. I said that on a commission of six or eight people, one should try to ensure that at least one person was clearly identified with each of the three main parties. In talking about the make-up of this House, it may well be, as I hope, that there will be people who are clearly associated with a particular party who also have other expertise to bring to bear. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor. I did not suggest that the NPC was an exact parallel and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Turner, for taking that argument forward. The proposed commission would not have executive powers. The work of the NPC and its regular publications, which are of enormous benefit, is slightly more the parallel I had in mind. Perhaps I might say a tiny word of correction to the noble Lord, Lord Turner. It is not right to say that none of the three parties was talking about putting up the retirement age until the day he came out with his report, and then suddenly they were in favour. I was arguing at some length in our party that we should. Indeed, he will remember from our discussions that we were in favour of a citizen’s pension for some time and we made it quite clear that that would be affordable only with an increase in the state pension age. But I thank him for his general support. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, that I find a little difficult his argument that we know the facts. Of course we know the facts now, but we will not know them without a standing commission in five, 10 or 20 years’ time. We want to ensure that we have a regular, authoritative, independent view, as did the Turner commission. In a way, the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, made the point against himself. He said the Government are estimating that the public sector deficit is £640 billion but independent actuaries are now estimating that it is more than £1,000 billion. Where does that leave us? That is exactly why we need an independent, authoritative body to come up with a more reliable and well-argued figure.