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Pensions Bill

Obviously—in the sense that any enterprise's bottom line includes all the costs, such as employer contributions. However, it does not follow that the money would have gone on extra salaries. The 3 per cent. figure becomes 8 per cent. in the context of the total contributions to funding the scheme. All the progress that we have made in cutting unnecessary burdens and encouraging, as I was pressed to do, people to keep existing final salary schemes open, while balancing the needs of the employer, is important and will help, but will not provide the full answer to the issues that Lord Turner and his commission raised. There is a serious problem of undersaving, with perhaps as many as 7 million people not saving enough to fulfil their aspirations in retirement. Unless that is tackled, a chasm will grow between the income that they want and that which they receive in retirement. There are many reasons for people not saving. Many on low incomes or with broken working patterns do not have access to a workplace scheme. Some will be put off by the complexity of pensions while others will simply live for today. Some will lack confidence in pensions. That is why the Government set up the Pension Protection Fund, which safeguards more than 10 million memberships of eligible defined-benefit occupational pension schemes throughout the UK. It is why we established a more powerful pensions regulator and delivered, through the financial assistance scheme, a fair and just settlement for 140,000 people who were robbed of their pensions.