My Lords, I thank the Minister for that answer. Before I move on, I will add a few things. It took eight minutes before all five of my responses were used. I mention that because this is a very complex area—I accept that. However, there is a lot of smoke here. The issue that most concerns me, and the reason why I intervened, is that there is no public money. I say that having looked very deeply into this issue. To those in Committee, I said that I had the honour at the beginning of my career to be the publisher of Pensions magazine, Savings Market and Insurance Age. Therefore, I have spent time understanding the pensions market. The £2 billion to £3 billion to which the Government refer is about taking out the gender discrimination between widows and widowers. Recent judgments have upheld that principle. It has nothing to do with occupational pension schemes.
The second correction that I wanted to make was on the issue about the Civil Partnership Act and why it was put in place. Under the Civil Partnership Act,
there is no corresponding civil partnership for straight people, so the read-across between opposite-sex couples and same-sex couples did not apply with civil partnerships. In this instance there is a read-across of a prejudicial treatment of two types of married spouses. That is my concern.
The final issue is that the cost is so minimal—£18 million at the low end and £80 million at the high end. The actuarial assumptions are so hard to make. Actuaries, in my experience, do not build the cost of gay people into their schemes. They do not look at whether someone is straight or gay and discount the rate. Historically, they do not go back and say, “Some gay people will have married because history allowed them to do so or society forced them to do so”. I am fairly sure that the actuarial calculations will remain pretty static. Those are the issues involved.
I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate and given support. In particular, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Howe of Idlicote, and the noble Lord, Lord Lester of Herne Hill, for adding their support to Amendment 84. I also thank my noble friend Lady Royall of Blaisdon for adding her name and support to Amendment 84A. Of course, I also thank the Minister. We have all been on a huge educational process on pensions; I fear that there may be another week of pensions mania, for which I deeply apologise. I thank her for her response; it is what the House had hoped to hear and I am very pleased with it. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 84.