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Pensions Bill

I thank the Minister for that reply. Given the time, I will not prolong the debate too much. The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, asked for an assurance that there would be no levelling down. She knows that I cannot do that, but she should be under no illusions—defined benefit schemes are going in one direction only, and that is closure. This proposal has been developed as a way of mitigating the impact of closure. I cannot say how many defined benefit schemes would be converted into conditional indexed schemes; I cannot say that it would even stop any vestige of defined benefit remaining. It is just one way of seeing whether we can stop what appears to be an irreversible trend. Even the Pensions Minister, Mr Mike O’Brien, in an interview with the Daily Telegraph earlier this week or late last week, effectively accepted that defined benefit schemes are going in that direction. It is the first time we have heard a Minister say that. There are clearly concerns that if employers switched on a future basis to conditional indexed schemes, employees would get less than they would under existing defined benefit schemes, but they may just be switched into money purchase schemes. That is the alternative and we have to weigh it up. I was grateful for the support of the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood. I agree with him that there does not appear to be enough urgency about this issue. I am afraid to say that while I am grateful for what the Minister said, he rather underlined that. People on the street say that the DWP is not committed to flexibility and that in many ways it is not committed to stopping the rot on defined benefit, because all the attention is now focused on setting up auto-enrolment and money purchase-type arrangements. The Minister shakes his head, but that is what people say. It is perhaps an unfortunate impression, but it exists, because it took a long time for the DWP to produce its document.