I have no idea whether the word “guarantee” is in the Bill. In life, only two things are guaranteed as far as I know: taxation and death. We are talking about not guarantees as such, but a defined-benefit scheme in which the entire risk is taken by the taxpayer and the certainty that gives people the chance to budget in their retirement is with the scheme’s beneficiary. In fact, it is even better than that. As the hon. Gentleman will know, because he has studied these things carefully, the advantage of a career average defined-benefit scheme is that it benefits precisely those workers whom I would have imagined he would be most in favour of protecting.
The Pensions Policy Institute, which the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington referred to, says:
“The Coalition’s proposed reforms will remove the different outcomes for high-flyers and low-flyers which exist in final salary schemes.”
It goes on to estimate that, under the current scheme, a high flyer
“would have had a pension benefit of 29% of salary, compared to 11% of salary for the low-flyer.”
Under the reforms proposed by this Government, both high and low flyers will have
“the average value of the pension offered being worth 15% of salary”.
That is a significant improvement for the low flyers. I would be astonished if all Members of the House were not in favour of that reform.
The hon. Member for Leeds West recognised that something had to be done, but tellingly, she made no reference at all to three of Lord Hutton’s four tests—affordability, fairness to the taxpayer and governance and transparency. Did she not think they mattered? Should they not be at the heart of what any Government do? That was a disappointing series of omissions.