Financial Guidance and Claims Bill [HL]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for her response and thank the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, for her support. This is about consumer protection. Of course, I respect the Government’s decision not to approve a secondary annuities market at this point. However, that does not address the fact that there are people out there with annuities worth £10,000 or less who are able to sell them, whether or not there is a market. They are particularly at risk, presumably, of obtaining very poor value. It is not clear to me why we need explicitly to undo legislation that is already in place to ensure that the financial guidance body can at least help people who might want to sell an annuity understand what the risks are. If the new body no longer has any requirement to inform or guide people on this issue, we still leave those consumers high and dry. As the legislation is already in place, it seems rather strange that the Government explicitly want to repeal it. They could just leave it on the statute book and make sure that there is adequate information as part of the new pensions guidance framework.