My Lords, I start by acknowledging the expertise and experience of the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, as a member of the Pensions Commission, on which she was able to rest when she moved this debate.
The purpose of the review is to inform the Secretary of State. Its job would be to collect and analyse the latest data, compiling a report to give the Government of the day the information they need to make a decision. Of course, we are all keen that the Secretary of State receives a report that is both impartial and credible. We appreciate the attraction of a panel to ensure that a wide range of views are reflected in the compilation of the report. However, we have been clear that we do not think that prescribing a committee is the right way to go. We do not want to restrict future Governments by prescribing exactly what the review looks at and who is doing the looking. There is greater merit in allowing Governments to choose whether to appoint a single reviewer—as with the review of public service pensions by the noble Lord, Lord Hutton—or a larger commission, such as the Pensions Commission. Indeed, the latter, set up by the previous Government, was made up of three individuals, two from the worlds of academia and business, neither of which, incidentally, was mentioned in the amendment.
Both of those cases show that a legislative underpin is not required to set up a review that can win cross-party and wider public support and that there is no consensus on where is the best place to find the right people. We do not think that the proposal by the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, to set up a permanent commission—an NDPB or a standing commission, as she put it—is appropriate. That kind of structure is simply not necessary for a review that will come together and publish a report on a single issue, wide-ranging though it may be.