National Insurance Contributions Bill
10:45 am
Jane Kennedy: There is a more political point, which you are making, Mr. Marris: if we have a pensions Bill before the House, why are we not taking the measure in that? I understand that that is perhaps what you are getting at. The truth is that we felt that—rather than bring this forward as a Government amendment to a pensions Bill, which we could not necessarily guarantee would be debated in full—this was a better vehicle to use, given that we wanted to take the time to get right the changes that we believed were necessary. Rather than bring that forward in a set of Government amendments, which we all know can be dealt with very quickly and very often to the dissatisfaction of Members of both Houses, we felt that this was a better way of doing it.