Pensions Bill

My Lords, I wholeheartedly support the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, in all the work on fairness that she has been doing for women. This is not the first time that I have supported her. My support goes back to about 11 or 12 years ago, when we went through the whole sorry saga of pension splitting on divorce. The principle was the same. It is not feminism or anything like it, but fairness. I absolutely believe in the case that the noble Baroness has made completely succinctly. The House should realise that if women retire with an incomplete basic state pension, anyone selling them a personal account or a small pension risks mis-selling to them, as women face a pound-for-pound withdrawal rate on pension credits. Employers would understandably avoid that risk by encouraging women to opt out, yet again causing a problem or a potential problem. Yet these are the very women who need to save. As all noble Lords probably remember, there was a statement only last weekend about the savings ratio in this country having fallen from about 10 per cent to a ghastly figure of just over 2 per cent. The Government do not seem to think that this matters, but it matters terribly. My basic economics of many years ago taught me that one should aim to save over 10 per cent and below 15 per cent. Failure to do so means that some people could be stacking up a lot of trouble. Who are the people who will be involved in this trouble? It is the very women about whom the noble Baroness has been talking—those who have given up their working lives to look after elderly parents, children or disabled people in their own family. It is just a monstrous injustice and I hope the House will support the noble Baroness on this amendment. The financial industry and business also want all pensioners to have at least a full basic state pension, as that encourages saving. It would also avoid mis-selling and reduce what I feel is a very demeaning trend; namely, an increase in means-testing. I certainly give the noble Baroness my support.