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Pensions Bill

My Lords, I am plucking the figures slightly from my memory, but I am fairly confident that the number of women in this cohort who have already retired is 4 per cent. I know that there are arguments about how many are part time or full time and adjusting their lives, but that gives you a context for that particular issue. Of course, our concerns for the women that the noble Baroness has just described have driven us to make this amendment. That is our concern as a Government, to take away what we regarded as too harsh a provision and to offer up this amendment. I would like to spend a little time on the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, about the charm of our lawyers, which she has obviously experienced rather more than I have. We have spent a lot of time with the lawyers on this issue and we have not just accepted the first or even the second proposition from them. As noble Lords will acknowledge and realise, we have spent a lot of time—many months—on this particular amendment and we are confident that there are significant levels of risk in doing it the way proposed by the original amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, which was to try to concentrate on the group of women alone. Trying to tough it out would expose us to the risk of the European Commission bringing infraction proceedings, which clearly would be unwise. If we were found in breach, we would at a minimum have to rectify the pension position for those already affected and leave the pension position for many people in limbo for several years as proceedings made their way through court. Clearly we could also be fined; the fine could be substantial and it is very difficult to put any kind of estimate on it. My noble friend Lord German asked about future changes to the pension system. We are still considering responses to our consultation paper, which were in general very favourable to making a major reform along the lines of the single tier. We are aiming to bring forward our proposals in due course. A number of noble Lords raised the issue of the future. I am grateful for the questions asked by my noble friend Lord Boswell and the noble Baronesses, Lady Greengross and Lady Drake, about what is to happen in future. There was broad agreement in this House that increasing life expectancy needs to be reflected in the state pension age. I think this House acknowledges that the state pension age needs to rise so that we have a sustainable state pension system which fulfils its primary purpose—to provide a decent threshold income in retirement. Following our recent consultation, A State Pension for the 21st Century, we are currently considering how best to achieve this. Therefore, I urge noble Lords to agree with the Commons in their Amendments 1 and 2.