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Pensions Bill

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that the slippage—it seemed at one point that it might be a haemorrhage—from defined-benefit and final salary schemes to defined-contribution schemes needs to be arrested. I hope that with the deregulatory review—this is the industry's view, and I expect it to deliver on it, given that we are making life easier and providing an extra £250 million in funds for pension schemes—we will see a stop put to that and will keep final salary schemes and defined-benefit schemes as much as possible. On the ACA's proposals, we obviously continue to consider all those things. The matter was raised with me at a dinner with representatives of the pensions industry, when one representative asked whether I was strongly in favour of the risk-sharing alternative. The rest of the representatives, who were reasonably representative of the industry, turned on the man who asked me the question and said, ““No, we don't want to have anything to do with it.”” I believe someone is looking into that. Obviously, we will continue to consider everything.