Natural Environment and Rural Communities Bill

Perhaps I can offer personal experience. For a time I had a pensionable post in the public sector as deputy chairman of the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. I was given a choice, which was either to stay in the government pension scheme or to accept a slightly larger remuneration and make my own pension arrangements. At the same time, the Treasury insisted that I did not give up any possibility of there being a widow’s pension, so my noble kinsman can look forward to a small pension—may be not, but let us assume that things happen normally. Pensions are enormously complicated, subject to a great deal of legislation. I thought that we were moving towards having as many people as possible making their own pension arrangements by money purchase out of a remuneration package that enabled them to do so. I urge on the Minister that the pension possibility is best administered by way of a remuneration package received on the understanding that the individual will make his own self-invested arrangements, rather than becoming a member of a government scheme, with all the administrative costs involved.