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Pensions Bill [HL]

My Lords, may I ask the Minister a question? He rested much of his argument on this amendment, as with Amendment 16, not so much on the issue of small pots as the fact that people would get a replacement income in retirement sufficient almost to match their wage. Therefore, it is not worth their saving. I raised this in terms of its relevance to the basic state pension and whether it will lift people above pension credit. All the Minister’s assumptions are based on the belief that the household he is dealing with is a single-person household. Like the Minister, I want women as well as men to carry pensions in their own right, whether or not they are in a relationship, but, as we know, 50 to 60 per cent of women over the next 20 years or so will be married, and many of those who are not will be in cohabiting relationships in which they may or not be financially interdependent but which may very properly affect their right to pension credit. Therefore, something like three-quarters of the women who could be eligible for auto-enrolment if we brought the threshold down to £5,200 from £7,500 would not suffer the withdrawal effect of pension credit by virtue of their partner’s or their husband’s income, which, as we know, conventionally floats them off it. Therefore, they would enjoy every saving; it would be worth while doing; and it would give them a small pot of their own. Therefore, the Minister’s argument probably does not apply to something like three-quarters of the female population we are talking about.