Pensions Bill

My Lords, could I have a word with the House? There is probably nobody else here who has stopped as much expenditure as I have over the years. I did five years as Chief Secretary—I cannot believe that even the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, would have stopped as much expenditure as I did during that time. In this case, I cannot think of a reason for opposing my noble friend’s amendment. The case she has made, and that has been made all round the House, is so strong that the only objection the Minister could bring would be based on cost. The noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, has just quoted the figures. The Treasury can do all kinds of calculations—I have done some accounting in my years there and outside. To talk about £0.2 billion or £0.8 billion over God knows how many years is nonsense. We are talking here about a really important amendment that will help not only hundreds of thousands of women, but others as well, so why oppose it? The only reason the Treasury will have given the Minister will have been cost. The noble Lord, Lord Fowler, mentioned net costs, and I was nodding not because I do not trust the Treasury—that would be a terrible thing for me to do—but because it occasionally gets the figures wrong. In this case, it cannot get it right—it is not possible. Nobody can say what the cost is going to be, net of means-tested benefits. We should be aware that total public expenditure these days is in excess of £500 billion. We are talking about petty cash here. To turn down an amendment as important as this for petty-cash reasons would be outrageous and I very much hope that the Minister, whatever the Treasury has told him, will ignore it. He really can afford to ignore it—especially as he is not even being paid for his job.