---

Pensions Bill

Just a moment; let me deal with my hon. Friend's question. The Chancellor has to make a judgment about the appropriate time to take certain steps. In this case, unlike any other I can think of for the moment, we have made a statutory obligation, binding the hands of the Government at a future date, to take a step that they must take. We have taken that unprecedented step because we regard it as so fundamentally important to the structure of the pensions reform programme that we are undertaking.