Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Work and Pensions – in the House of Commons at 2:30 pm on 8 January 2007.
James Purnell
Minister of State (Pensions Reform), Department for Work and Pensions
2:30,
8 January 2007
We have worked closely with Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs on the issue. From the moment that they were put into the public domain, we wrote to people alerting them to the proposals, which appeared first in the white paper and are now in the Pensions Bill. Obviously, we cannot take Parliament for granted and start to change the rules before the law is changed. We must change the law first, and that is the stage at which we will be able to make the change that the right hon. Gentleman suggested. The precedent, under both the previous and present Governments, is that contributions paid at the time should not be refunded, otherwise every time that we introduced a social security policy change we would have to make changes backdated many decades.
A document issued by the Government laying out its policy, or proposed policy, on a topic of current concern.Although a white paper may occasion consultation as to the details of new legislation, it does signify a clear intention on the part of a government to pass new law. This is a contrast with green papers, which are issued less frequently, are more open-ended and may merely propose a strategy to be implemented in the details of other legislation.
More from wikipedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_paper