Pensions Bill
6:45 pm
Baroness Hollis of Heigham (Labour)
I accept what the noble Baroness suggests but I find it extremely unlikely in relation to a personal account, for example, because of problems deriving from similarities of names and addresses or movements from house to house, property to property and job to job. I would be amazed if companies did not think it wise to keep those records. The noble Baroness may be right—I defer to her greater expertise on this—but it would be very rash indeed not to keep records to track, if only to avoid possible arguments about the size of the pot, the investments made and any access to following benefits.
The problem with NIRS2 was not about tracking the records but the fact that NIRS2, as I know to my bitter experience, failed to notify people of their deficient contributions. The records were tracked; the problem was with the deficiency notices.
Finally, my noble friend cheered me up slightly when he said that it was perfectly reasonable that these things were under review. He talked about the need to keep this simple and not to make PADA's job more difficult. However, he should consider the fact that flexibility is not the opposite of simplicity; it is the opposite of inflexibility and rigidity. The requirement down the years would be to revisit something because not enough headspace was built in in the first place. I am sure that my noble friend is well aware of that. With that moral homily, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.