I have listened closely to the Minister. When one listens to him, particularly on pension charges, one has to listen very closely, because—how shall I put this politely?—there is a gap between the rhetoric and the reality. I will analyse the extent to which there remains a gap. In one sense, he has caught up with the questions that need to be asked about
pension charges, but from the detail—or lack of detail—in his announcements, it seems we are still a long way from getting answers.
On other matters first, however, the Minister says that auto-enrolment is going “exceptionally well”. I think that that is accurate, but I am sure he would agree that we have to be cautious, given that it is very large employers that have enrolled and that the percentage of savers’ income going into the new pension schemes is very small—in many cases, it is hard to notice. We welcome the developments, however, and pay tribute to him for taking forward the previous Labour Government’s auto-enrolment scheme; there is consensus, I think, on both sides of the House that auto-enrolment has to work effectively. It is crucial that every single one of the 10 million people being auto-enrolled between 2012 and 2017 can be sure of getting value for money from that pension scheme. The necessity of value for money for all auto-enrolment schemes is what drives my amendments.
I wish to say a little about why that matters so much and how the Minister’s wind-up of the state pension interacts crucially with auto-enrolment. Essentially, he has gone for a hard and fast wind-up of the second state pension. No doubt, he will justify that move, and there are reasons to think it is sensible, but if we are to have a quick wind-up of the second state pension and a fast move to a flat-rate state pension, the biggest losers from that switch—this might be defensible, because there are always winners and losers—are likely to be lower-paid workers in the private sector who did well out of the redistribution accrual mechanism in the second state pension. If someone was low paid in the private sector, they accrued in a way that brought them closer to those on higher incomes. In many cases, therefore, the same people now being auto-enrolled will be the same people losing out from the hard and fast wind-up of the second state pension, or losing out in the longer term. That makes getting auto-enrolment right all the more important. The first thing he should have done when he took office—I know he will have an enormous in-tray—was work out how to ensure that every one of the 10 million people enrolled got value for money. That is the context of this debate.
The Minister says that the Bill will further improve the situation, so let me pursue some of his comments and then turn to Labour’s vision for private pensions. Amendments 5 to 10 to clause 32, on short service refunds, are more or less uncontroversial. On clause 34 and exemptions from auto-enrolment, he referred to our amendment 53 and said that I saw this as an “evil Government”.