Pensions Reform

My hon. Friend is right, and as he speaks with the voice of the accountancy profession, I would expect nothing less. I will come on to the issue of manipulation by employers in few moments, if he will bear with me. The low paid, people with health problems and those with multiple employers all desperately need generic financial advice—not investment advice, but generic financial advice, particularly relating to their current debts and how best to manage them. It cannot be left to the bandit advertisements on television, which encourage people to roll up all their debts into one as a means of sorting out their problems and having money to spare. By and large, those are not good deals. Sadly, decisions have been taken recently about the funding of advice from citizens advice bureaux and similar organisations, which mean that it is no longer available. I suggest that that is not a good deal. We really need a network of generic financial advice made available to the low paid and underpaid to allow them to make wise choices. As I said, I do not mean investment advice, but generic financial advice. For the same reason and in line with keeping costs low, there needs to be a strong default option on the national pension savings scheme. As far as possible, we need to take the choice out of the equation. The greater the choice, the greater the need for advice, the greater the opportunity for mis-selling, the greater the complexity and the more costs increase. We also need to keep the scheme simple for employers. I have spoken to hundreds of employers over the last three or four months and they want no role at all in making any choices about the scheme for their employees. They want a simple scheme that allows them to deduct a certain amount of money every month, to send it off somewhere and to forget about it. Simplicity is important both for employer and employee. There are dangers with this sort of enrolment scheme and we need to be honest about them. Certain less-than-honest employers will seek to induce people not to take part in the scheme. I do not want to traduce anyone, but by and large, the smaller the employer, the greater the likelihood of that happening. There is no better policed system than the national minimum wage, but there are still issues about it. There are still far too many employers who do not pay the national minimum wage. If they are not willing to pay a wage of £5.05 an hour, it is likely to be a problem for them to contribute to the national pension savings scheme. We really need a strong regulatory role—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond) is turning up his nose, but I wonder whether he will turn up his nose in 30 or 40 years’ time when people who have spent a lifetime working for an employer find themselves in poverty because they were forced out of the scheme.