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Pensions Bill

The point that I was trying to make earlier is that we must give our best shot at predicting what will be in the pot in the years ahead. That is obviously very difficult, but if I went to a private insurance company and said that I wished to invest £30,000 in a scheme, the actuaries would make some sort of prediction about the outcome, and the state pension would be included in that. It is therefore incumbent on the Government to give their best shot at prediction. I accept that it will be difficult. We cannot predict the future, but it has always been the job of actuaries to try to predict the size of the pot. That is why it is important not to guarantee more—it would skew the whole market if people were guaranteed a greater amount than they would get from a separate pension scheme—but to provide a knowledge base and give people some idea of how much they will get. People must have that information.