Pensions Reform

The Secretary of State is right to say that everything is set out, say on page 299 of the Turner report, or in annexe 6 of the regulatory impact assessment. However, if he asks people on any high street in Britain what they understand about the Government’s White Paper on pensions reform, they will tell him—if they understand it at all—that it is about reintroducing the earnings link in exchange for raising the basic state pension age. I am saying that a sustainable consensus must be based on the dissemination of information, so I make no apology for trying to get the debate going in the public sphere. That means not that the changes that the Secretary of State wants to make are wrong, but that they must be debated and understood.