It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field). I welcome the Bill as warmly as he did in his initial comments, but I suspect that my comments will carry on being positive throughout.
It is important to put the changes in context, because the truth is that we have a coalition Government, without a majority in this House unless the two parties work together, making significant proposals on the welfare state and changes to the state pension system. Every Opposition speaker so far has welcomed those changes before moving on to criticise various specific individual points that will, I suspect, be addressed in Committee. The important point is that, despite the terrible financial background, these changes have been taken on by the coalition Government after three years, whereas for 13 years under the previous Government we saw precious little change that would have allowed people to save for their own well-being in retirement.