Pensions Bill


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New Clause 5

Application of Freedom of Information Act to Personal Accounts Delivery Authority
‘(1) The Freedom of Information Act 2000 (c. 36) is amended as follows.
(2) In section 35 (formulation of government policy etc.) insert after subsection (2)—
“(2A) Information held by or provided by the Personal Accounts Delivery Authority is not to be regarded—
(a) for the purposes of subsection (1)(a), as relating to the formulation or development of government policy, or
(b) for the purposes of subsection (1)(b), as relating to Ministerial communications.”
(3) In section 36 (prejudice to effective conduct of public affairs) insert after subsection (2)—
“(2A) Information held by or provided by the Personal Accounts Delivery Authority is not be to regarded—
(a) for the purposes of subsection (2)(a), as relating to the maintenance of the convention of the collective responsibility of Ministers of the Crown, or
(b) for the purposes of subsection (2)(b), as relating to the free and frank provision of advice, or the free and frank exchange of views for the purposes of deliberation; or
(c) for the purposes of subsection (2)(c), as relating to the effective conduct of public affairs.”.’.—[Mr. Waterson.]
Brought up, and read the First time.
Motion made, and Question put, That the clause be read a Second time:—
The Committee divided: Ayes 5, Noes 10.
Division No. 6 ]
AYES
Laws, Mr. David
Penrose, John
Pritchard, Mark
Selous, Andrew
Waterson, Mr. Nigel
NOES
Bailey, Mr. Adrian
Banks, Gordon
Brown, Mr. Russell
Creagh, Mary
Heppell, Mr. John
Hillier, Meg
Keeble, Ms Sally
Plaskitt, Mr. James
Purnell, James
Smith, Ms Angela C. (Sheffield, Hillsborough)
Question accordingly negatived.

New Clause 6

Review of role and purpose of Financial Assistance Scheme
‘(1) The Secretary of State shall commission an independent review of the Financial Assistance Scheme having regard (among other things) to—
(a) the efficiency and cost effectiveness of its administration;
(b) whether it could be more effective if administered by the staff of the Pension Protection Fund;
(c) whether it is adequately financed;
(d) what other sources of finance could be made available, including but not limited to unclaimed assets;
(e) whether it should be engaged in the purchase of bulk annuities.
(2) The Secretary of State shall publish the findings of such review within six months of this Act coming into force.’.—[Mr. Waterson.]
Brought up, and read the First time.
5.45 pm
Mr. Waterson: I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
This is a familiar argument, but no less important for that reason. New clause 6 deals with the financial assistance scheme. I shall begin with the specifics of the new clause. It requires the Secretary of State to commission an independent review of the FAS to consider, among other things, the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of its administration. Let me pause there for a moment.
We have always had serious concerns about the wisdom of setting up the FAS as a completely separate body, doing its own thing in a completely different part of the country, and we have always taken the view that the only possible reason for doing that was a political one: to underline the big disparity between the benefits paid by the FAS and the compensation paid under the Pension Protection Fund.
Just to sketch in a bit of history, the FAS was the illegitimate child of the 2004 legislation. It was cobbled together at short notice, and announced on 14 May 2004 at a point when the Government were in real danger of being defeated in this House by a combination of Opposition parties and Labour rebels, simply because a large number of people who had lost their pensions, through no fault of their own, would not fall within the PPF. In our view, the FAS was always misconceived.
The announcement in May 2004 produced a figure of £400 million, but no one was ever able to justify it. It was always as plain as a pikestaff that it was wildly inaccurate and inadequate. It now turns out that some 125,000 people were affected—the estimates were quite a bit lower at the time—so the Government have had a rather difficult time trying to squeeze potential claimants into the £400 million financial envelope that the Chancellor produced at short notice.
Subsection (1)(a) deals with the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of the administration. Subsection (1)(b) deals with the point that I already made about whether the FAS could be more effective if administered by the staff of the PPF. I have little doubt that we should scrap the FAS as a separate entity and bring the whole administration within the PPF in the way that I described. Indeed, a review was carried out of the FAS—at the moment the name of the gentlemen who did it escapes me—which in many ways took the view that the administration should be shifted into the Pension Service itself.
Subsection (1)(c) deals with whether the FAS is “adequately financed”. I shall deal with that more broadly in a minute. Subsection (1)(d) reads,
“what other sources of finance could be made available, including but not limited to unclaimed assets”.
Subsection (1)(e) deals with whether the FAS
“should be engaged in the purchase of bulk annuities.”
So how is the FAS doing? Only today, we discovered in a parliamentary answer that it has finally provided assistance to some 871 people. That is a massive advance on the situation a few months ago, but it is still not terribly good when we consider the 125,000 people caught in this nightmare. And that is despite the fact that it has been in operation for almost 18 months. It is now, of course, closed to new applicants and seems to be taking on average at least six months to process a single claim.
The FAS was set up in York—almost as far from the PPF as it is possible to get—and it has already cost £7 million to deliver payments to just 871 people. Those figures came out the day before there was to be a demonstration outside Parliament on behalf of the Pensioners Action Group starting its High Court case against the Government tomorrow over compensation and the ombudsman’s report. We will come back to that report and the Government’s reaction to it in more detail when we discuss new clause 7 shortly. However, it seems clear to us that the FAS got off on the wrong foot and after a year and a half in operation only a tiny fraction of those who need help are receiving it. To use a phrase current in the Home Office, it is simply not fit for purpose—I have described already what I believe should happen instead.
So how should we deal with the FAS? The parliamentary ombudsman said in her report:
“I am quite clear that the FAS will not constitute an adequate and appropriate remedy for the injustice claimed by those who have complained to me”.
We have heard that the Government have provided extra funding for the FAS. In Department for Work and Pensions questions yesterday, the Secretary of State was worryingly vague about the extent of that commitment. Having carried out an analysis, with expert help, it seems to us that the Government have given an open-ended commitment to what is essentially a defined-benefit scheme compensating people under the FAS. It is difficult to see a limit on the Government’s liability. I hope that the Minister has had a chance to reflect on that since yesterday because it seems that the Government, who are claiming a figure of £1.9 billion, could be liable for quite a lot more, given the level of benefits established. Presumably, it will be easier to establish the total liability now that new claims under the FAS are out of time, as I understand it. If the Minister has more information, I would be delighted to hear it.
Our view is very clear. We think that the FAS has not been a success. If it was designed as a way in which to get the Government through a rough political patch, and through a general election campaign, it has been mildly successful, but it has not solved the long-term problems of so many people with legitimate needs for financial help following events completely beyond their control. Would it not make far more sense to fold the FAS administratively into the PPF, which will hopefully speed up the process by which people are compensated?
I will deal with all these points on finance in much more detail when we discuss new clause 7, if that helps the Minister and you, Mr. Taylor. Subsection (1)(c) of our new clause 6 relates to whether the FAS is adequately financed. That is also a key question if the Government are determined to keep it as a separate entity, subject to the point that I made about what limits, if any, there are on the Government’s stated liability.
We have said that unclaimed assets are an obvious place to look, given that there is £3 billion of unclaimed pensions, which might be appropriate for the purpose I am discussing. For a long time, the Government’s mantra was that just because assets were unclaimed, it did not mean that they did not belong to people. That is true in theory, but a year or two ago the Chancellor did a 180° turn and is now looking at ways to grab unclaimed assets. I suspect that that is partly to make up the shortfall in funding for the Olympics. Clearly they are available and this is an obvious way to use them.
There is also a major issue about the bulk purchase of annuities. I know all the arguments about annuities and why they should be purchased in an ideal world, if one is a purist. However, the money available could go a lot further. I am not just talking about the money that the Government have already committed from the taxpayer or the unclaimed assets. We should remember that there are residual assets in these pensions, although they are admittedly inadequate for the purpose of covering all the claims.
Let us consider those things taken together. The money could go a lot further if, instead of buying bulk annuities with all the premium attached to the cost of that in the marketplace, it was spent simply on paying out to people on a regular basis the compensation to which they are found to be entitled. These are important issues, and I want to go into the financing of the claims in more detail when we consider the ombudsman’s report and so on.
It is a crying shame and, as I have said before, a stain on this Government’s record that some of these unfortunates are having to appear in the High Court tomorrow to make a case for proper compensation. There is an extra dimension to this, because I understand that the Government have been playing hardball, as the Americans would put it, on the legal costs that would be incurred if claims were to fail. I am sure that there are precedents in respect of public interest cases, particularly given that this is essentially a class action, where Governments should not pursue costs because legitimate issues need to be considered. I do not want to stray into the realms of sub judice, but the Government should take a more emollient line. Why should these people be going to court at all? Why should they not be looking to the FAS to look after their legitimate interests? This situation is an enormous shame.
My final point comes up in spades in new clause 7, and we have made it many times, including on Second Reading. It seems to us that the Government have a major task to perform in clearing the ground for the new system of personal accounts. That means removing any factors within their control that are undermining confidence in the pensions system as a whole. I suspect that nothing has done more to undermine confidence, particularly among younger workers, about saving for pensions than the regular appearance of a lot of middle-aged or older men stripping off for the cameras at Labour party conferences or elsewhere to make their case about their lost pensions. Such events are extremely bad news for the whole pensions system and for the Government in terms of trying to build up confidence in pensions. That is why it is important that we air these issues as part of the debate on this Bill.
6 pm
Andrew Selous: I agree with everything that my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne has said. I have an interest, because some of my constituents were affected by the events involving the Dexion pension scheme in Hemel Hempstead, which is not far from my constituency, and one or two were affected by the collapse of the Albert Fisher pension scheme, although that is somewhat further away from Bedfordshire.
I simply want to continue on the point of trust which my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne mentioned. I say this as someone who wants personal accounts to succeed, and who genuinely wants to be part of this consensus and to have a much better system of state and private pension provision. There is unfinished business here, and the Government have an obligation to clear the decks and try to get a slightly more just settlement for those 125,000 people who feel incredibly hard done by in terms of the guarantees that they thought they had.
It is all very well for people like us to stand up in Committee and elsewhere and make these points. I want to quote three paragraphs from a lady called Anna Roberts. She wrote this in 2003 when she was 33 in an excellent document that I have referred to before produced by Age Concern and the Fawcett Society. It was principally on women’s pensions, but the point that she makes here about trust is so relevant and shows why new clause 6 is important in helping personal accounts to get off to the best possible start. Anna Roberts said:
“I don’t have a private pension and have never seriously considered joining a pension scheme, despite working full time and earning a decent salary.
Like the majority of people I know, I am incredibly cynical about pensions and would rather look at other ways to plan for my retirement. I think that buying a property or investing in a second home is a much safer option.
I do not trust the pensions system. There are so many stories reported in the press about people who lose out after making years of contributions. At the moment I just don’t think it is worth taking the risk.”
I suspect that this lady’s view has become even more cynical, given the coverage that those 125,000 people have received.
Mark Pritchard: Likewise, I have constituents who have been affected by the Motherwell Bridge pension scheme collapse. Does my hon. Friend agree that while the financial assistance scheme gives some compensation, in the majority of cases it has not been full and complete compensation, which in itself has left people with a bitter taste in the mouth?
Andrew Selous: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It was initially very minimal compensation. The Government have increased it somewhat. But I really come back to subsection (1)(d) of new clause 6, particularly in relation to unclaimed assets. I am surprised that the Government have not looked more closely at this area, particularly as they have looked at unclaimed assets, possibly in terms of the social investment bank which would do good works that we all would welcome in our constituencies. I think that these people who have lost out have a prior moral claim. As my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne said, we hear rumours that this money may be earmarked for the yawning gap in the budget for the Olympics in 2012. New clause 6 is an attempt to deal with the issue of trust so that we can get the system of personal accounts and this new settlement off to the best possible start.
James Purnell: It is quite right to say that the key issue around personal accounts and pension saving in general is people’s confidence in the system. The hon. Gentleman’s quote came from before the Pensions Act 2004 was introduced and before the introduction of the pensions regulator and the scheme-specific funding regime which, as we were discussing yesterday at Question Time, is in part responsible for company pension schemes being better funded than they have been since 1999.
Andrew Selous: Does the Minister believe that in 2007 people of Anna Roberts’ generation think that pensions are more certain and more trustworthy than in 2003, and that they are more inclined to go into pension schemes?
James Purnell: I cannot comment on the view of the public, but it is worth pointing out that we have the pensions regulator and the Pension Protection Fund. They give people the kind of safety net that the hon. Gentleman knows about from his experience on the Committee. It is important that we communicate to younger people who are thinking about saving in a company pension that the Pension Protection Fund exists.
If the hon. Members for Eastbourne and for South-West Bedfordshire were attacking a regulatory regime at all, it was the one that was put in place in the Pensions Act 1995, and the much-commented-on leaflet describing the 1995 Act in the terms that the now shadow Foreign Secretary used when he was the Minister taking through that Act. We have been defending that regime in the European Court of Justice and we will also defend it in judicial review this week. If he thinks that the regime that was put in place by the 1995 Act is insufficient in light of the 1983 insolvency directive, perhaps he will say so now.
Andrew Selous: I am grateful to the Minister, but I am a bit disappointed with the tone of his remarks. I did not seek to apportion blame either to his party or to mine. He is right in saying that the issues go back many years, but the important thing now is to consider how to provide a more just settlement for these people so that we can move the issue on. I am not hearing a solution from the Minister.
James Purnell: I was just responding to the hon. Gentleman’s challenge about how the situation has changed since 2003. Three key things have changed—the pensions regulator, the PPF and the financial assistance scheme have been introduced. They were not there before. If we are to discuss the matter, we need to do so on the basis of whether we think that the regulatory regime is right, and we have defended it in a number of court actions.
Just as important is whether parties are proposing to put more money into the scheme. The hon. Member for Eastbourne said on 27 June that he was not proposing to put any more taxpayers’ money into the financial assistance scheme. It would be easy if there were a pot of money out there that had not been allocated and could be spent on this. I shall respond to his remarks when I address that matter. What is clear, and I hope that he will make it so to people during the demonstration tomorrow, is that the Conservative party is not proposing to spend any more taxpayers’ money on the financial assistance scheme.
Mark Pritchard: Of course, in many cases there is a pot of money available—a pension fund. It might be that a company goes into receivership and that a pension fund is suspended. Does the Minister agree that there might be a case for investigating ring-fencing such pension funds and protecting them from high and excessive professional fees from receivers?
Mr. Waterson: The Minister seems to be a one-club golfer when it comes to the FAS; all he ever says is that the Tories will not commit any more taxpayers’ money. However, we have put forward a series of income and asset streams that could be used and tried to consider sensibly how people could be properly helped. All the Government ever seem to do is say, “Oh, it will cost some vast amount. It is a visit to another version of the Lib Dem Santa’s grotto. It will cost £15 billion, and the world as we know it will come to an end.” However, they should be considering some of the options and working them out. They have the resources to do that; why will they not?
James Purnell: I shall be talking about exactly those issues in my speech. If the hon. Gentleman thinks that I have not addressed them, he is welcome to intervene on me at the end.
The amendment calls for a review of the financial assistance scheme. Members will know that we have been here before. The hon. Gentleman referred to the Galvin review, which we announced on 6 June and which reported in July. It was charged with considering what could be done to provide the best administration and management for the financial assistance scheme to ensure that people were paid as quickly as possible. The review also considered how to ensure the most cost-effective operation of the FAS and a full range of options for its organisation and location. The review was conducted by DWP officials, with representation from the PPF, seconded experts from the pensions regulator and significant input from the pensions industry.
The review explicitly considered transferring the administration of the FAS to the PPF. In that particular case, the regulatory requirements faced by the PPF in respect of the transfer of FAS would have placed considerable strains on a small organisation in its first years of operation. Any PPF option would also require secondary legislation to extend the PPF remit, which could involve a significantly longer transfer process.
However, the review found that a number of recommendations should be acted on to improve the administration of the FAS. It recommended that a different skill set be brought in and that there should be a revised approach to gathering data, to speed up payments. It considered outsourcing and decided that it was not a viable option. Instead, it decided to bring such skills in-house; I shall talk about that a bit later.
The review concluded that the length of wind-up and competing trustee priorities were real constraints on making fast payments, that a detailed work analysis of the operational unit was required and that the long-term governance of the FAS was best placed in the Pension Service, which has the competence to operate the payment processing effectively and efficiently. Since July, we have worked hard to implement the review’s findings.
Mr. Waterson: Having said all that, and given that the FAS has had six months to implement the recommendations for improvement in the service, is the Minister satisfied that as of yesterday only 871 payments have apparently been made, of the much larger number still being processed?
James Purnell: I will come to that in my speech; I shall try to explain the main hurdle in paying more people. It is worth saying that there is no way we should be paying 125,000 people because the vast majority of them have not yet retired. The financial assistance scheme pays only those who have reached retirement age, survivors and, in some cases, the terminally ill.
The review looked into what the key barrier to making faster payments was. That key barrier is data collection. We need to get data from schemes about all individual members and the rights that they have built up so that we can work out how much to pay them. That barrier would arise in pretty much any scheme that the hon. Member for Eastbourne wanted to come up with. Unless he wanted a flat rate to be paid to people regardless of how much they had contributed, any scheme that he came up with would have to go through the process of calculating how much individuals were owed and to what level they should be topped up. In this first stage, that requires significant work and has led to the six-month delay that the hon. Gentleman mentioned. That is the up-front process, going through all the schemes working out people’s entitlement. Once that has been done, the process should be relatively simple. At that stage, we shall just be paying people an amount that has been calculated, which will be a relatively simple task, but in the first few months, working out people’s individual entitlements is a genuinely significant task.
6.15 pm
For that reason, we are currently working with the private sector—Mercer Human Resource Consulting, which is one of the leading providers of services to the pensions industry—on our processes and on the data issues that we have encountered. Mercer is working to transfer its expertise and to build on the knowledge already acquired by the staff at the FAS unit.
I have also written to key figures in the pensions industry, urging them to support the members in the schemes for which they are responsible and to supply FAS with the data that we need to make payments. We have urged the pensions industry and its administrators to provide the data that we need. We are also working with the pensions service to complete the transfer of the FAS operational unit as quickly as possible.
FAS staff have already successfully handled the challenges of scheme notification and qualification—the process of working out which schemes will be eligible. They have dealt with applications from more than 900 pension schemes and, since we announced the review of the FAS in June, its staff have overseen a 10-fold increase in the number of payments being made. I do not believe that it would be an effective use of taxpayers’ money formally to review the operation of the FAS again. That would prove a distraction to the staff and to scheme trustees and administrators, who are now working closely together to get those data. I want to thank the trustees who have been providing information and making requests for initial payments and, indeed, the FAS staff, who have been working extremely hard and effectively to increase the number of payments.
Now, the amendment also calls for a review of FAS funding. In the White Paper in May we announced an increase in FAS funding from the £400 million originally allocated to £2.3 billion. In response to the hon. Gentleman’s inquiry, we set out the forecasts on the basis of which we arrived at the £2.3 billion, based on a review of the people and schemes. We set that out in some detail to Parliament. I am happy to discuss that with him again, if he wants. The key point is that the amount that we will pay to people in a situation is clear; we have committed £2.3 billion, which, we believe, cover our future liabilities under the financial assistance scheme. As I said, and as I think the hon. Gentleman agrees, there is a balance to be struck between the real need of people in this situation and what the taxpayer should be expected to fund. We did and do recognise the real losses that people have had. That is exactly why we have extended the scheme to those within 15 years of normal retirement age.
The hon. Member for Eastbourne pressed me to say whether we had looked at other sources of funds. We have. His amendment proposes looking at unclaimed assets, which continue to be seen by the Opposition as a panacea. The challenge for them is that the Government will be committing, on behalf of the taxpayer, to guarantee pensions for the lifetime of the scheme, with survivors’ rights. That would be for at least 50 years. I do not think that it would be responsible to provide such a guarantee without having identified the resources needed to underwrite it over the long term or, indeed, to establish the amount available as unclaimed assets and then represent that amount as an ongoing income stream.
The hon. Member for Eastbourne cannot be sure that unclaimed assets would provide an income stream over 50 years. It is also clear that there is not enough in unclaimed assets to be able to pay pensions in full, even if he thought that that stream was one that could be reliably depended on for the next 50 years. That is the problem with relying on unclaimed assets. It is the same problem as thinking that we could pay from the national insurance fund surplus or the Department’s contingency reserve. They are not pots of money that can be used to make that guarantee over 50 years and it is not fair to pretend to people that that could be the case.
Andrew Selous: Is it the Minister’s argument that because unclaimed assets are not a total solution, they are no solution at all?
James Purnell: No, that is not my argument. My argument is that if people are to make a guarantee over 50 years, they need to say how it will be funded. It is also worth saying that unclaimed assets are not Government money. As the hon. Gentleman knows, an independent commission—the Commission on Unclaimed Assets—has been set up to propose recommendations on the use of unclaimed assets in the UK. The commission recommended the creation of a new independent financial institution to drive voluntary and community organisations seeking to relieve poverty in the UK. The commission’s final report to be published before the 2007 Budget will detail a series of technical and regulatory mechanisms to ensure a thorough auditing of dormant accounts and a rigorous campaign to unite account holders with their unclaimed assets. Obviously, if that is successful, there will not be as much money in that fund.
The commission has made clear what the fund should be used for. If the hon. Gentleman is saying that the money should be taken out of that fund and that he disagrees with the proposal, that is his right. However, the point is the same for any use of Government money. For example, if the Government were to use taxpayers’ money to increase the amount in the FAS, that money would not then be available for an alternative use. Decisions should be looked at in that context.
Andrew Selous: The point made by the Minister is, of course, valid. Some money may be reunited with it owners—that is fine and we accept that. However, is he really saying that, as the Minister for Pensions, he is happy for that money to go towards the purposes of a social investment bank and reducing poverty? That is an objective that all hon. Members would share, but, as the Minister for Pensions Reform, does he really think that that should be the first call on that money?
James Purnell: My job as the Minister for Pensions Reform is to try to get more money for this scheme and that is exactly what we did in the White Paper; we extended the money available to £2.3 billion. We clearly recognise the loss that people have suffered and we found extra taxpayers’ money to extend the scheme to people within 15 years of their normal retirement age. I have made clear, as has my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, our commitment to helping people who have suffered those losses.
The other source of funding mentioned by the hon. Gentleman was bulk annuity. He knows that the FAS tops up an annuity purchased by the scheme’s trustees on the member’s behalf. In concluding that that represented the best use of taxpayers’ money, we considered whether pooling the remaining assets was a viable option. The difficulty was that around 110 of the 640 schemes that qualify for the FAS have already completed winding up and have purchased annuities. For the rest, it is not known what proportion of assets are still being held, but a significant proportion will already have been spent on annuities for pensioners, therefore significantly reducing the bulk purchasing power of the remainder. As the hon. Gentleman knows, if we do not annuitise, that changes the risk profile of people in the future and potentially leads to pensioners’ incomes going down while in payment, which, again, may be something that people are reluctant to expose themselves to.
Mr. Waterson: Can the Minister give us some idea of what data are or could be available on which pension funds still have assets that have not been devoted to purchasing annuities? That is a crucial issue, but it seems quite difficult to get a handle on the figure.
James Purnell: I thought that I had just given it to him by saying that 110—in fact it is 111—of the 640 schemes that have qualified for FAS have already completed winding up and have purchased annuities.
So, in December, the hon. Member for Eastbourne remarked that the review of FAS was
“pithy and to the point.” —[Official Report, 10 th Delegated Legislation Committee, 6 December 2006; c. 7.]
We are implementing the review’s findings and have considered other sources of finance, but we think that in making guarantees to people over the next 50 years, we have to know where the money will come from and be able to identify it reliably. We completely share the Committee’s sympathy for people who have lost pensions. I have met more than 100 people in that situation and, of course, it is heartbreaking to have had an expectation that has not materialised. That was exactly why the Government believed it right to provide extra support through the financial assistance scheme and to introduce the pensions regulator and the Pension Protection Fund. However, we must balance that obligation with our obligation to taxpayers, many of whom do not benefit from defined benefit pension schemes at all. We have great respect for the office of the ombudsman and the motives of those who are fighting to represent people, but both the ombudsman and the Select Committee recognised in their reports that the Government did not cause the pension schemes to fail. It would not therefore be right to write a blank cheque to underwrite the losses. I hope that I have explained why it was right to extend the FAS, but it would not be fair to the taxpayer to underwrite schemes in full.
Mr. Waterson: I am grateful to the Minister for at least parts of his answer and for taking us through some of the practical difficulties, but I wonder whether the matter could be re-examined. I appreciate the Minister’s point about transferring to the PPF being somewhat troublesome when it had only just started, but now that it is more established I wonder whether that could be reconsidered. I was interested to hear about the work being done with Mercer, which will hopefully bear fruit.
The Minister spoiled it all by saying, among other things, that the Government would not write a blank cheque. Nobody is asking them to do that. We are saying to them that they should stop telling us what the problems are and consider more seriously the options that have been put forward. They have committed £2.3 billion, but it is still unclear to me whether there is an open-ended commitment beyond that figure. We agree about the extra burden on the taxpayer, which is precisely why we keep mentioning other possibilities.
On unclaimed assets, we have always said that the obvious safeguards must be in place, including major attempts to reunite people with their assets, as happened in Ireland, and an underlying guarantee that late applicants with a legitimate claim can be compensated. There is a big difference between the bank accounts in question in this country and, for instance, those in Ireland, where a lot of them go back a long way—sometimes hundreds of years. The chances of anyone coming forward are therefore much slimmer, although it is not impossible. The Minister could have been a bit more open about how far the process of identifying unclaimed assets and bank accounts has gone in organisations such as the British Bankers’ Association, and how far the process of identifying the £3 billion of unclaimed pensions has gone at the NAPF. It happily confirmed that figure to us recently.
I suppose it comes down to whether the Minister is happier for money to be spent on shoring up the Olympics than on pensioners who have in many cases lost almost everything. I shall not press the new clause to a Division, but I will certainly wish to return to the matter on Report. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Motion and clause, by leave, withdrawn.
 
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