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Pensions Bill

If the money has been taken from the employee’s salary, it must go somewhere. It does not matter whether it is in transit or not. If the employee opts out within the prescribed period—Ministers were, I know, thinking of a month for that, but we will see what transpires—there will be an amount of money floating around that is going back, as the noble Lord has now said to me but which I did not understand before, to the employee or the employer as appropriate. I wonder whether the employer is appropriate, because pensions are deferred wages. Even in the arrangements for personal accounts, they will turn out to be deferred wages. Wages are owed to the employee, surely. I leave the noble Lord to chew that over because it is a slightly extreme thought.