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Pensions Bill

I should like to delay the House briefly to comment on what the Minister said. I understand that he has reached a consensus on people opting in or out of the provisions in the Bill and that he feels it difficult to move from that until 2015. However, the armed forces are an exceptional group of people, the vast majority of whom do not serve their full 22 years—or these days up to 30 years. When welcoming members of the armed forces from my constituency back from Afghanistan, I met someone who has just agreed to do another five years after serving for 22 years and who even hopes to do another five after that, making 32 years' service in the armed forces. However, that is quite rare. The vast majority of men and women in our armed forces serve for between three and five years. The amount of money in the pension pots that they accrue is minuscule. The administrative costs on the state—in this case on the MOD—of running those schemes from within, rather than their being opted out of, into another Government scheme that could be administered separately, are huge as a proportion of the benefits of the scheme. I would like the Minister to look into the issue again and to reconsider that exceptional group of people earlier than 2015, to see whether he could reach a consensus among the members of the other groups with which he has been dealing. I am sure that they would understand that our armed forces are particularly affected. There could be groups of people who have served for short periods in the armed forces—perhaps they served only in training, but were injured through no fault of their own and had to leave the armed forces. It seems ludicrous that there should be a tiny pot that will sit until they are 60 years old, but which could be brought into such schemes quite easily.