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Pensions Bill

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and I am delighted to see that she is present today following her sterling service in Committee. The short answer to her question is that I do not know. I hope that the Minister does, however, and that he will share that with the House. Once Report and Third Reading are out of the way, I hope to organise a meeting—which has been envisaged for some time—with Mr. Jones and his chairman, Paul Myners, and perhaps we can get to the bottom of some of this. However, if costs are running at such a level, it can mean only two things. The first of them is that the overall projected costs will be much higher than forecast. It also suggests—unless the consultants are, heaven forfend, not earning their keep—that there are practical problems to do with the time scale for delivery of personal accounts by 2012 about which we are currently ignorant, and I do not think we should remain so for much longer. Let me return to the fundamental question. The situation is perfectly plain from what Ministers have said, and also from the impact assessment of the Bill, which states in paragraph 3.80 that"““in the long run, the personal accounts scheme is intended to be self-financing””." We all know what John Maynard Keynes said about the meaning of the ““long run””, but how long is this long run and how much will all this cost? I commend this group of amendments to the House, because it tries to pin down the Government and PADA on recouping the costs of set-up over five years, in terms of grants not being made by the Treasury, and in terms of repayment over a set period and on the basis of a commercial rate of interest for any loans advanced to PADA by the Treasury. If the Minister is aware of any such proposals or plans, it will be helpful if he shares them with the House now.