I thought that was what I just said. Let me be clear: we want to get this thing going. The hon. Gentleman raised the issue of the £10,000 pot size limit. Clearly I would like to go further, and we look at a £20,000 pot size limit in our consultation document, but we have to get the thing going. May I tell hon. Members who were not here at the start of the debate that he said he had sat and watched a video of a speech of mine? I commend him for that, as watching videos of me speaking shows real devotion to the world of pensions. In my speech last week, I made it clear that we see this as the beginning of a process. The pot size limit could go up and the scope of “pot follows member” could be increased, but we envisage beginning with auto-enrolment pots. I am clear about that, and there is no ambiguity: we are beginning with auto-enrolment pots.
The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), who is not in her place, asked when further action would be taken on fiduciary duties. For the record, in case she should happen to read it later—or watch a video—I can confirm that the Law Commission’s final report on the issue will be published in June 2014. Obviously, further debate will take place at that point.
I wish to respond to the related issues raised by the hon. Members for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and for North Ayrshire and Arran (Katy Clark). The hon. Lady asked about the important issue of the position of protected persons, on which we have consulted and on which I hope we will shortly reach a conclusion. We think that slightly more workers are involved than she suggested, but certainly tens of thousands of workers are affected. One challenge we face is that this is not just a matter for our Department. For example, if we place a
cost on the energy employers through the abolition of the national insurance rebate and if we exclude their employees because they are protected persons, that has the potential to feed its way into energy bills. Her party leader has a view on energy bills, as do we, but the knock-on effect of a decision we take on energy bills has to be thought through. The same applies in the transport sector, to which the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington referred. If railway and other employers cannot pass on through the pension scheme the costs we are imposing on them through the ending of the rebate, that will find its way through into fare increases and to consumers. So we have to think through a wide range of consequences of these decisions. That is why this is taking a while, but I appreciate the need to get on with it.
The hon. Gentleman said that there was a special case for the railway industry. His new clause 7 does not provide any protection in respect of any of the other privatised utilities; there is no suggestion that if any of those employers went to the wall pension protection should apply—it would just apply to the rail industry. If he feels so strongly about the justice of this issue for rail workers, why does his new clause not say that any protected person should be protected if the sponsoring employer goes bankrupt? I know his affiliation, and I have spoken to him in his role as leader of the group on rail workers, but if Parliament were to accept his new clause, we would have to deal with the question about why we did not do this for everybody else, too.