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Mr. Webb: Among those campaigners, whom the right hon. Gentleman rightly praises, are many workers who have lost their company pension rights but whose employers are solvent. When they heard Friday's announcement, they hoped that they were to obtain justice. Yesterday, the Minister for Pensions said that if the employer is solvent it is the employer's problem, but that is not the case in law. Those people have lost out and have no redress. How many of the 60,000 people—the Secretary of State said in the House that 60,000 is about the right number—were employed by solvent employers and will get nothing from the scheme?

Mr. Smith: We have also acted on cases in which employers are solvent. On 11 June, I stated that full buy-out would be required after that date, which not only improved protection for the future but addressed the Maersk workers' cases. The Maersk workers were not covered because their cases predated the statement, but the company came into line with the spirit of the Government's intention, and other companies would be right to do the same.
 
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When we set up the scheme, most of the arguments for it concerned companies that had gone bust, which the scheme is intended to cover.

Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab): Yesterday, the Minister for Pensions gave me heart when he emphasised that the principle of fairness will underlie how the details are drawn up:

"we are not about using technicalities or legalese to define people out of a proper assistance programme."—[Official Report, 19 May 2004; Vol. 421, c. 1034.]

I ask my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to bear in mind that a number of the pension funds and firms involved have been passed like a parcel from owner to owner, and the precise point at which they are solvent or insolvent is not an exact science. My constituents at Kalamazoo, as well as Cheney, Warwick and Debenholt pensioners, will be looking for that kind of fairness and flexibility.

Mr. Smith: I listened to my hon. Friend carefully and pay tribute to him—I am sure that his constituents also do so—for his energetic representation of the Kalamazoo workers in his constituency, whose case he has put vigorously to Ministers. I am happy to repeat the criteria set out by my hon. Friend the Minister for Pensions. The House will have noted carefully that the terms of the amendment were open, with questions of eligibility and periods of coverage yet to be prescribed. Throughout this process, however, I have been careful not to raise false hope, and I will not start now. We will examine the matter carefully, and all stakeholders, including workers and hon. Members, will have an opportunity to feed their views into the process by which we collectively determine how the scheme will operate. As my hon. Friend the Minister for Pensions said yesterday, we will pay clear regard to principles of fairness.

Mr. Jim Cunningham (Coventry, South) (Lab): I appreciate that my right hon. Friend has listened to all kinds of organisations on the pensions problem. I welcome the Bill, which I know has its limits. Will he tell us more about the consultation and the criteria that will be used? Does he hope to develop the criteria during the consultation?

Mr. Smith: I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, who has also been to see me more than once in campaigning on behalf of his constituents. We will, of course, take account of representations as we develop the criteria through the consultation process.

Mr. Tynan: I have listened intently to the Minister for Pensions. Many people who have lost their pensions will read with interest yesterday's contributions. It would be a tragedy if individuals were left out of gaining payment in lieu of their lost pensions, which could become a focal point for disquiet. I hope that my right hon. Friend accepts that we must carefully consider all 60,000 people who have lost their pensions.

Mr. Smith: I thank my hon. Friend for his remarks and pay tribute to his service on the Committee. He has made a great contribution. Yes, of course we will look very carefully at that issue in the spirit in which
 
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he raises it. I have to say, however, that when the case was being made to me and to the Government that a scheme was required and action was imperative, hon. Members accepted that one of the difficulties was that whatever that action might be, there will always be the problem of where to draw the boundary. Wherever it is drawn, there is a risk that someone, possibly with a case deserving of sympathy, will fall on the wrong side of it. I have gone through this process with my eyes open, as, I hope, have other hon. Members. We look at every case carefully, but we cannot give an unlimited undertaking, whatever the circumstances, to anybody who has been hard done by in terms of the way that their pension has turned out.

As I have said all along, I have been very conscious of the need to look workers in the eye and the need for them to know that I have been straight with them all the way through. We have been straight, and we will continue to be so. Although there is no legal liability and no precedent set, I have been conscious all along that if the Government could do something to help these people, it would be the right thing to do. We have announced £400 million over 20 years to help to address the serious losses that some now face, with encouragement to industry to offer further support. Furthermore, we have set out practical steps, including involving our partners and industry experts in developing the scheme, consulting on draft regulations by the end of November and having the scheme in place by next spring, with payments to follow as soon as practicable thereafter.

David Taylor: My right hon. Friend has told the House on several occasions that later this summer he will provide figures and analyses that show how the scheme might work. Will those figures include the net savings that are anticipated in relation to the means-tested benefits that will not be payable because of the welcome support that the Government are giving?

Mr. Smith: I will carefully examine whether that can be included in the report. I am sure that it will be a consideration that is brought to bear by people who take the figures to make estimates.

I want to be absolutely straight about this. The money will not cover everyone who feels aggrieved, nor will it give to those whom it does help everything that they might want, but it will provide significant help to those who have lost out so badly.

I am proud that a Labour Government are taking action that many said was not possible. I honestly do not think that help on this scale would have been forthcoming under any other Government. The crucial thing is that thousands of people who thought that they had lost their pensions will now receive help. The measures in the Bill, such as the pension protection fund, will give extra protection for the future to more than 13 million members of final salary schemes.

The Bill is a big step forward for security and choice and for confidence in pensions. I commend it to the House.
 
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3.23 pm

Mr. Waterson: This has been a long and hard road for those of us who served on the Standing Committee, which had some 22 sittings—[Interruption.] I see that the tension is getting to the Secretary of State, as well. I thank all hon. Members concerned, who, on the whole, kept their senses of humour—those who had them in the first place, that is. I exclude the Minister from that, of course, although I believe that he is still going to the evening classes.

I thank the officials who desperately tried to assist Ministers in maintaining the pretence that there was some sort of order and organising genius behind the Bill, which at times seemed to acquire a life of its own. I thank all those who advised us—the voices from outside who were able to send us draft amendments, briefings and comments—and all those who would have liked to do so if so much had not happened in a rush at the end of the proceedings.

Without in any sense denigrating the efforts of other members of the Committee, I particularly thank my hon. Friends the Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne) and for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker) for their sterling efforts. To use a contemporary cinematic expression, they both worked liked Trojans.

Mr. George Osborne (Tatton) (Con): We got defeated.

Mr. Waterson: We did get defeated, although I am afraid that there was no wooden horse, just a lot of wooden jokes.

This is a very large Bill, but it does not give much away. Having spent 22 sittings trying to peer behind the verbiage, enormous amounts of detail still remain for regulations, codes of practice and so on. At times, we seemed almost to have reversed roles, with the Government frantically tabling amendments and new clauses to their own Bill, which the Minister, with his gift for understatement, once memorably described as "work in progress".

I turn first to the part of the Bill that deals with the state retirement pension. Earlier this week, I had the privilege of attending the pensioners' parliament in Blackpool, and a very special event it was. The Minister, having bottled out of turning up, had the temerity to claim that my duties should have kept me in the House. However, as I said to the pensioners' parliament, I am the shadow Pensions Minister, I want to be the Pensions Minister, and if I were the Pensions Minister I would be in Blackpool for that occasion, not in the House of Commons. The Department for Work and Pensions has a large ministerial team, and the Minister could well have made the effort. Once we had pointed out the clash of dates, it was always open to the Government to schedule Report for a different day, but they did not take that opportunity. That shows where their priorities lie.

I should tell the Minister, before I share with him some other thoughts from the pensioners' parliament, that they were deeply unimpressed with the Age-Related Payments Bill, which we have the pleasure of debating in Committee next week—[Interruption.] The Secretary of State is taking on the role played in Committee by the Minister's PPS, the hon. Member for Greenock and
 
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Inverclyde (David Cairns), which was to shout abuse from a sedentary position—or perhaps he was saying his rosary; I could not quite make it out.

It will not have escaped people's attention, particularly those in the pensioners' parliament, that the Government have been careful to engineer the situation so that we did not have the opportunity to debate restoring the earnings link for the state retirement pension. That suited the Government down to the ground, because it is definitely not part of their pensions policy. To be fair, it suited the Liberal Democrats, too, because their policy is under review, whatever that means. That is a great shame. We spent a lot of time discussing some highly technical amendments, perhaps to a greater extent than their merits deserved. There will be an opportunity to vote on restoring the earnings link at the next general election.

Let me explain in my consideration of the provisions that deal with the state pension why restoring the earnings link is so important.

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