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Pensions Bill

Perhaps my noble friend can help me on a somewhat different point, to which he also referred, about the interaction with IRBs. I cannot resist putting in a dig that the one thing you have to do is ensure that there is the full rate BSP if this is to work, otherwise there will be pound-for-pound deductions, not 40 per cent. What I wanted to push him on was the pathfinders, and perhaps he may care to write to us. I stand to be corrected, but my recollection is that there will be two pathfinders, both in the north, which will cover some 750,000 people, of whom 500,000 will be interactive and 250,000 face-to-face and telephone advice; but this will not go out until January 2009, it will take 12 months to collect the information and, I suspect, another six or nine months to analyse it. So we will reach 2012 before we have the proper loop back from the pathfinder proposals. I am relying on memory and I could be mistaken. First, can my noble friend confirm that those broad contours are correct and, secondly, if 250,000 of the 750,000 in the two northern pilots will have either face-to-face or telephone advice, what limits will he put on this? Will he target it, as the noble Baroness suggests? Will it be comprehensive? That is a huge enterprise and may be larger than the total population about which the noble Baroness is concerned.