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Pensions Bill

I promise not to delay the House for too long. I support new clause 2. I was fascinated to hear the common-sense approach that, yet again, the Minister took to the issue. The nature of means-testing means that we are dealing with the most vulnerable people in our society: those whom the state feels are below the threshold that we would all like people to be at, without needing a means-tested benefit. As a result, such people are the most ill-informed and cannot purchase the information that Members of this House and other members of the public could; such people will not receive independent financial advice. My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, West (Sir John Butterfill) just alluded to the fact that such people will rely extensively on the information that the Government and the schemes' actuaries put out to the public. Above all—this is where I agree with my hon. Friend—they will rely on the tabloid press. If the tabloid press start saying that opting out is probably people's best option because it will be safer, and that people should not worry because they can always fall back on means-tested benefits because they might not be better off, that would make this part of the Bill, at least, fall apart. The Minister would probably agree about that. It is therefore imperative to put as much basic information as possible into the public domain as early as possible, to enable people to make a conscious decision to stay in the scheme, because there could be an exodus. I remember that back in the 1980s, it was ““opt in, opt out””; lots of different schemes were in operation and things were very complicated. Financial representatives phoned people up to say, ““I think you should opt out of SERPS,”” or, ““You should opt in to SERPS.”” We made decisions about that specific matter, many of them wrong. I made wrong decisions, but I was persuaded to do so by a financial representative. What worries me enormously is that because we are dealing with the most vulnerable people, who we are trying to get off benefits and into a pension scheme that prevents them from needing means-tested benefits as they reach their more mature years, all the hard work, everything that has been going on with all the different consortiums and all the consensus that has been built up could fall apart so easily, and even more people might end up on means-tested benefits. None of us would look forward to that situation.