What estimate his Department has made of the number of people aged 40 years or under who do not make any contributions to either occupational or private pensions; and if he will make a statement.

In 2005-06, 6.2 million employees, 0.9 million self-employed people and 3.6 million economically inactive people aged 20 to 40 in the UK were not contributing to a non-state pension.

I am grateful to the Minister for those statistics. If he has looked at the general household survey conducted by the Office for National Statistics, he will know that since 1995 the number of men and women in full-time employment who have occupational or private pensions—in the age bracket about which I asked—has fallen. Many of my constituents in Putney see getting a pension as a luxury to come after having paid off student debt and perhaps having bought their own home. Given that we know from Barclays that the average starting salary fell last year to £13,800, does the Minister agree that it was particularly unhelpful and counter-productive for the Chancellor to increase income tax on low earners when his Department seeks to introduce personal accounts in which those people are expected to save money?

Obviously, taxation policy is a matter for Treasury questions. I believe, however, that the hon. Lady shares in the consensus that personal accounts should be introduced. I have read with interest the helpful and serious report on that by the Select Committee on Work and Pensions, of which she is a member, and we shall examine that in detail. The right response to the issue of pension saving is automatic enrolment and a matching employer contribution—both of which I think that she agrees with—and the introduction of the national pensions saving scheme, which is the right model to deliver low charges and good returns for those saving in it.

I was visited recently by a constituent who has lost not one, but two, pensions, and who falls outside the FAS. He complained to me that when he chided his daughters for not contributing to a pension scheme, they replied that he was a mug for having done so. Until Ministers are prepared to grasp the nettle, which our amendments last week offered them the opportunity to do, there is every likelihood that people who save for a pension will simply be told that it is a mug's game.

We have grasped the nettle. We have introduced an Amendment that guarantees at least 80 per cent. of what people have lost. We are examining how that can be supplemented. We are not prepared to make empty promises, which have been described by the Association of British Insurers as robbing Peter to pay Paul, or as yet another raid on pensions, which should not be done. We are saying that we should have a proper review. I would say to his constituent's daughters that we now have the Pension Protection Fund, which does provide a safety net for people in the future. The Labour party tabled proposals for that in the 1995 Pensions Bill. If the hon. Gentleman's party had supported them, we would be in a very different situation now.

Does not the Minister realise the terrible damage done to long-term confidence in pensions by this Government's failure to ensure prompt and adequate compensation for people who have lost pensions? Does he think that the under-40s in particular will be encouraged to participate in personal accounts by the sad spectacle of some pensions victims dying before help reaches them, while the Government conduct yet another review?

It is not right to promise people money that we do not know how to deliver. That is not the right type of politics. The Shadow Chancellor said that a test of the Opposition's credibility as a Government was whether they were going to come up with more unfunded promises on pensions. That is exactly what they have done. Voters will draw their own conclusions on the credibility of the Opposition party to be in government.