About 2,400 defined-benefit pension schemes remain open to new members.
Given the Prime Minister’s disastrous decision in his first Budget as Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1997 to raid pension funds to the tune of £5 billion, does the Minister share my concern that the take-up in defined-benefit pension schemes has dropped by 1 million in the past year and that, as I understand it, about 4,000 schemes have closed? If the Minister shares my concern, what are the Government going to do to address the present parlous situation?
The hon. Gentleman will be aware that pensions are for the long term and that investments go up and down. Therefore, deficits appear in schemes at different times, which sometimes go into surplus. Such changes occur. The only people immediately at risk would be those in a scheme where the employer moved into insolvency and there was a significant deficit. That is why the Pension Protection Fund has been set up. I remind the hon. Gentleman that the Government have restored confidence in pensions, not only by setting up the PPF, which ensures that people have a kind of insurance scheme, and creating the regulator that oversees risk in the pensions market, but by sorting out the financial assistance scheme and ensuring that those 140,000 people got justice. We are in the process of restoring confidence in pensions—a confidence that was seriously damaged by his Government.