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Pensions Bill [HL]

Well, they are, and it is the Conservative Party agents’ superannuation scheme, but I promise not to detain the Committee on that. I hope I would have given the same attention to anyone else with whom I was in a trustee relationship. May I just make two points? I fully understand that the Minister was kind enough to quote my slight reservation in our earlier exchanges on related matters. The first is a note of concern: it would certainly be unfortunate if one employer were somehow to be delinquent because of the failure of another employer to declare, which had created excess over the qualifying limit. I just make that point; I am sure my noble friend will have it in mind. The second point is intended to be more positive and it might help to inform trains of thought. One always has to be careful about these sorts of things, not least for data protection reasons. I happened yesterday to have gone to a completely unrelated meeting in this building about occupational health, which is an interest of mine. We were looking at the new construction workers’ smart card scheme. Of course, once there is something that is able to identify the individual with known characteristics—dates of birth, for example, or presumably one could incorporate an NI number—and that is portable, it is possible for that to be tendered, or even required to be tendered, through various places of work. It might be possible to aggregate electronically in that way. I just offer that to my noble friend as a way forward. I am pleased to see the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, also nodding, at least as a thought. We always have to be careful with these things, because there will be some people on manual, some people who do not understand and minority interests and industries. But if we can possibly start working toward some sensible protocols people could use, it would be generally beneficial.