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Pensions Bill

I should again declare my interest as a partner of the national commercial law firm Beachcroft. However, I no longer have to declare an interest as president of the Chartered Insurance Institute, because at lunchtime I handed over the chain of office to Trevor Matthews, who later this month will become chief executive of Friends Provident. It is very important that we do nothing to stifle innovation, because that has been right at the heart of the pension industry and must continue always to bear that in mind as a material factor. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, for her kind remarks about our previous discussions of matters like this, but in particular I support my noble friend Lady Noakes in what she said. Perhaps the only contribution that I want to make to this debate is for the Minister. In many respects I have been down this road before. The one thing that I always tried to avoid during the many years that I was a Minister was pressure from within the department, particularly from my fellow Ministers—usually from the Treasury and the committees that look after legislation—to legislate in a rush. That is particularly important in this Bill. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott, although I shall not go down his road and make a speech about his speech. He was absolutely right to say to the Minister that we need time to get this right. Thanks to all sorts of pressures, including Statements and various other matters, many of our debates on this Bill were truncated and we are now in the seventh day of Committee. We will almost certainly need further time and there is, therefore, a wonderful opportunity for the Minister. I say this from the Back Benches. There is much more discussion still to be had on this Bill. He would be very popular if he were now to say to the House, ““We just need time to reflect””. We can either recommit or come back to this Committee stage in the overspill Session. There is no dramatic need to conclude Committee before next Tuesday, although the Minister will be told by his officials that the problem with having a further Committee sitting in the overspill is that all sorts of things may arise during the recess, all sorts of results might flow from further consultation. Surely that is a good thing. As the noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott, said, a number of organisations should participate in the discussions as well as those on the Front Benches. What about consensus? We heard a great deal about consensus at the start of proceedings on the Bill. There are grounds to hope that this legislation will endure for generations to come; and that there will be a real, radical change in the amount of money being put aside for pensions and a substantial increase in the number of people who embark on proper levels of saving. We all hope that. I do not know about all these telephone conversations with somebody called Macho Mike. If it is Mr O'Brien, I have to say that I do not recognise the description. I have had many dealings with Mr O'Brien and that is not a phrase that comes readily to mind. If we are to develop a consensus and entrench a scheme that will last for generations to come, we have to get the detail right. Without going down the road that my noble friend Lord Lucas and other speakers went down, my plea to the Minister is that there is now a great argument to pause and think, to sit down with key stakeholders in the industry and elsewhere to make sure that we are giving the right powers to the right bodies to meet the main objective of the Bill, which is substantially to increase pensions savings. Surely on that there is substantial consensus. I plead with the Minister: do not let us lose any consensus by moving too quickly.