Pensions

My Lords, I welcome the White Paper and the Government’s proposals. Like the noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott, I found the statistics very hard to add up, so I welcome my noble friend’s assurances that he will enlarge on them for us. Essentially the Government are following the Turner proposals in so far as they largely affect men. The earnings link, the personal savings account and other proposals, are greatly to be welcomed. However, the Government are not following the Turner recommendations for women. They are introducing a more generous version of the existing contributory system. I welcome the generosity. I fully accept that the Government’s way will produce earlier benefits for women than might otherwise have been the case. They are affordable; and I welcome that. Having said that, we buy that generosity at a very high cost to women. First, some women will still be outside the contributory system. Any woman who has two part-time jobs and is engaged in informal caring will still not qualify for an NI stamp. Secondly, the system will continue to be complicated. By tweaking the contributory system—and it is a fiction of a system—women will still not know what they have to do to get the stamp to get the pension; and that complexity continues. Thirdly, if that complexity continues, women will still be discouraged from saving as fully and adequately as they need to do to ensure a prosperous and comfortable older age. I welcome the report so far as it goes. It is great news in so far as it follows the Turner agenda. There is still more to be done in terms of the women’s agenda. I hope that my noble friend will agree with me that this is essentially a bridge into, I hope, a universal basic state pension. If in 20 years’ time, as the report suggests, something like 90 to 95 per cent of women will be covered, why bother to keep the myth of a contributory system going? Why not clean it up once and for all so that women, the self-employed and everyone know where they stand? I hope in due course to persuade my noble friend of those proposals.