Pensions Bill

My Lords, I rise diffidently to speak on this issue, but I am fortified by having read the nine-page leaflet to help people like me to understand these recondite matters. I refer first to the six-year rule: ““Thou shalt do this within six years of having missed””. That is a valid point whether you can buy six, nine or any other number of additional years. I argue this on behalf of ordinary people like me, of whom there are many, who lead busy lives and do not like to face the complexity of national insurance. While the document to which I have referred is written in commendably plain words, it guides one some three times in the relevant section to go to a website, yet many people do not have access to the internet. On one occasion the confession is made that these matters are extremely complex. The Leitch report pointed out that getting on for 20 per cent of our adult population are functionally illiterate. They find it difficult to understand leaflets and respond to official rules. The leaflet states elsewhere that the department ““may”” alert people to buy some extra years of pension contribution, but the implication is that it may not. The rules keep changing. Many ordinary people lead busy, complex lives. A woman bringing up children may not be in work, may be in work, may work part time, or may have two part-time jobs. When faced with this, she would ask, ““Where do I stand?””. In creating this complexity, we have a duty to help people to understand it. That is what I care most about in the proposal. There is also the question of cost. I accept that someone buying extra years just before they retire would be making a smaller contribution than if they had been paying in 20 years earlier, because the Government would have had use of that money much earlier. If that money had been invested for that time, it would have doubled in value. However, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, stated in Committee on 4 June, her amendment does not specify what the contribution should be. Those who want to argue the question of the cost ought to recognise that. Also on the issue of cost, I argue that to give a person the opportunity to buy those nine additional years reduces the risk that the Exchequer will have to back in later years the total cost of everyone to sustain themselves. That point does not seem to be acknowledged. Which is better, to give people the chance to buy extra years so that they are less likely to depend on public support or to say, ““Sorry, we can’t help you; you’ve missed out and it’s your fault””? Seven or eight years later, who will be carrying the can? A persuasive case can be made for this amendment.