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Pensions Bill

First, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott, for his support for the amendment. I found the Minister’s response a little troubling. He said that a review would be held in 2017 and that it would review the limits, which is an issue for Clause 61, together with transfers, which, as he established earlier, are not an issue for Clause 61. Therefore, the issue of transfers is on one side; we are talking about limits, and in particular the limit under subsection (1). My point is that, even if the Government carried out a review in 2017—an idea that we support—they could never realistically come to the conclusion that they should write their power out of the Act. I completely accept that they could use their power to set much higher limits if they were satisfied that no market imperfection was caused and that there was genuine consumer demand for it, but I think it is very unwise for the Secretary of State to say, ““I’ll never ever need that power again””, because what the Government find in 2017 may not be what they find at some later date. This will be a state-backed pension scheme and therefore we have to bear in mind that it will be a bit of a brute in financial importance terms, given the sheer volumes of money flowing through it. It is not responsible of the Government even to have a power to repeal the need to place limits, and therefore I hope that the Minister will look carefully at this again. It would be unsatisfactory to leave subsection (5) in the clause because it would be difficult to conceive of any situation where a Secretary of State could satisfy himself that for all time there should be no power to set the limits as described in this clause—that is, not only the annual limit but also the possibility of setting additional amounts under subsection (3). I do not know whether the Minister would like to add anything to what he has already said.