---

Financial Assistance Scheme (Miscellaneous Provisions) Regulations 2008

I thank the Members who have welcomed the order, although that was wrapped around by some criticism and a review of the history as the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, saw it. I, too, acknowledge the effort that campaigners have put into what has been a very solid campaign, and I hope that, however we see the history of this matter, we agree that we have ended up in a good place. One of the challenges of government is dealing with public finances. The cash cost of where we ended up is some £12.5 billion and the net present value is around £2.9 billion, so this is a significant use of public resources. The noble Lord, Lord Taylor, referred to financial mismanagement and economic incompetence. I reject those charges, of course. We have had debates in the past, particularly around these regulations, against the pensions backdrop. A good starting point for an objective and proper analysis of that are the reports of the noble Lord, Lord Turner, and his commission, which set out the real reasoning behind the challenges that the pensions industry has faced and faces in the future, such as issues of longevity and overestimating the long-term financial returns from investments. Those are the root causes of the situation we face. There is a statistic, and if I can remember it rightly I will bore the Committee with it. I think it comes from Department for Work and Pensions statisticians, who estimated a possibility, or maybe a probability, that there is a person alive today aged 59, likely to be a woman, who could live to be 120.