Baroness Kramer (LD)

My Lords, it has been such an excellent debate that I will be extremely brief. I am troubled by two things. One is that the Minister does not seem to realise that this is not voluntary action by the pension industry. It is because it sees it as the only way to avoid actual mandation, not because people have sat down and said, “All these years we have been getting it wrong; now we have had a conversation with the Government and we’re going to get it right”. That is not what is going on here. Secondly, I am troubled that the Minister does not understand the consequences of the level of risk that is embedded in these qualified assets. She is perfectly satisfied that, if they go wrong, the damage falls on the people with the narrowest shoulders. To me, that is seriously incomprehensible because, for those people, the consequence is frequently going to be poverty. I ask her to sit back and think about this. The Government are right to encourage people to save for pensions, but they also need to understand that, when people have narrow shoulders, low incomes and limited financial knowledge, they are not in a position to take the kind of risks that she is, in essence, saying that they should be taking and, if they take them, they are guaranteed winners. If she believes that they are guaranteed winners, then simply step in and provide the protection that I am talking about, which would cost the taxpayer nothing. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.