My Lords, there has been a great deal of rhetoric surrounding this Bill. Some of the claims for the Bill may be far-fetched, but in one respect they probably are not. Many people have claimed that the reforms in the Bill constitute the biggest shake-up of our pension system for 100 years. If that is true, it is incumbent on the Government to have a clear plan—rather as my noble friend has indicated—for keeping Parliament abreast of the impact of those changes and reporting appropriately on it. None of us knows at the beginning of the extraordinary journey on which we are embarking what will happen and what will be the consequences of giving pension savers these significant new freedoms and flexibilities. It is quite likely that these are responsible people. They have been saving in workplace schemes, in some cases, for decades. Perhaps they are not going to blow their pension pots in a reckless spending spree at the end of their working lives. I tend to agree with that, but we simply do not know. Whereas giving choices is a great policy and one that I can support, it competes with another policy that has similar standing: that is, we must ensure that people approach and enter retirement with enough income to meet their lifestyle requirements.
As has been said by many others in the course of this debate and in another place, these two policies are, to some extent, competing with each other through the Bill. My noble friend’s amendment is really seeking to do one important thing, which is to ensure that there is a proper appreciation of the risks inherent in this approach to the new legislation and a willingness to keep Parliament informed of them. If we get this wrong, not only are we going to impoverish future generations of retirees, but there is, as we know, some risk that the costs of that will fall back on to the shoulders of taxpayers. Either of those two outcomes would be a terrible result of these new freedoms and flexibilities which, in principle, I strongly support.
I hope that the Minister will be able to respond positively to my noble friend’s amendment. I suspect he will say that there is something wrong with the drafting of the amendment. We have all been there before and we know how this process unfolds. If he is not prepared to accept the amendment I hope that he will at least give the House some indication of what reporting the Government are planning to embark on so that future legislators will be able to look back at the detail of this legislation and conclude at some point whether it is working or not. If it is not working, we will have to change it. If it is working, we will all celebrate one of the great reforms of the Government. However, it is clear at the moment that there is no indication, either in the Bill or elsewhere, of what plans Ministers have to keep Parliament abreast of the impact of these changes, given their significance and importance. It is necessary that we hear from the Minister today what the Government’s plans might be.