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Pensions Bill

My Lords, my noble friend is right. I stress again that some of the detail and the practicalities have to be worked through. I talked about an information campaign and certainly that would not preclude letters being sent to individuals for whom the opportunity may be beneficial. The noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, asked about reduced rate contributions. The right to use class 3 contributions to buy back extra years for the periods when reduced rate contributions were paid is not available. It is not permitted under the current rules and there are no proposals to change that. Therefore, if someone paid a reduced rate contribution for an earlier year, they could not now replace it with a class 3 contribution. However, that is not a change; it is the existing law.