My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, on bringing forward this amendment. It is vitally important that the many contributors to these open schemes have comfort that these schemes will continue and will provide them with a reasonable level of benefit when they retire. I am grateful to the Railways Pension Scheme for a very useful briefing, which other noble Lords have seen. I myself am not a member of that pension scheme, but I have a large number of friends who are among its 350,000 members. I think it is relevant that 100,000 of them are still active, and that number will probably continue. That will happen, as the noble Baroness said, in the schemes for local authorities, nuclear decommissioning and many other sectors.
The real point is that many of the people contributing to these funds are comparatively low paid. Perhaps the Minister when she comes to respond can explain why the Government think it is a good idea to allow the schemes to require a greater contribution from the members and from the employers for no particular benefit. It seems absolutely clear that open and closed schemes must be treated separately. In ending, I ask the Minister to explain to me and other noble Lords why Ministers are not going along with this amendment. It seems so simple and well thought through, and I will certainly support it if the noble Baroness decides to divide the House.