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Pensions Bill [HL]

My Lords, I will be brief. Like others, I warmly congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, on tabling this amendment, which addresses an issue of wide concern. It does not go as far as most of us would like; it raises the pension age to 66 one year earlier than we would want and one year later than the Government would want. However, apart from a couple of minor kinks, it smoothes the position so that nobody has to wait for more than 12 months. It is a considerable achievement to craft an amendment of that nature. We should be very grateful to the noble Baroness. The issues are very much as they were previously. However, I would challenge the Minister. If the response was, ““We like the look of this; we’ll try to bring something back, but we’ll do it in the other place””, then it would not be a particularly satisfactory one. The reality is that we stand a better chance of getting amendments through at this end than at the other end. What further information might the noble Lord and his team need to be able to produce an amendment now or at Third Reading? The noble Baroness seems to have given us a very good platform for moving forward. I was not sure about the costing; the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, said that it was £7 billion. I would guess, from the Government’s point of view, that that is certainly an improvement from where we were on it. If the noble Baroness was minded to press the amendment, we would certainly go into the Lobby to support it.