Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill

Baroness O'Cathain Excerpts

Wednesday 11th March 2015 Lords Chamber

Unpaid internships benefit those whose parents can afford to support them and detrimentally affect those whose families simply cannot afford to do so. This is a problem we need to solve, but we need the data available to do so. I beg to move.

[Baroness O'Cathain (Con)]

My Lords, I wonder who would collect the data. Could we be assured that the data would always be fully acknowledged? I can see companies saying, “Well, I’m not going to fill in that form”. Many is the time one gets questionnaires and just throws them out. I am slightly concerned about the way in which this could be done. I agree with the noble Lord that there is an awful lot of difficulty in this whole area, partially because careers advice is not great in schools. As a result, people are really desperate to know what sort of jobs would be available. If they are offered an unpaid internship I can see them being tempted to take it, but I absolutely agree that it creates yet more haves and have-nots. But how does the noble Lord think that it would actually work?

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, that is the important issue. Let us be quite honest about this: a number of MPs, for example, have unpaid interns with parents who can afford to bankroll them. But if a young person is living on a council estate in Newcastle or Liverpool, how on earth would they be able to come to Westminster and have that experience? If we talk about social mobility, opportunities for all, the raison d’être of internships should be about providing those opportunities for every single person. It does not happen, which is very sad indeed.

I am pleased to say that some internships are paid and one applauds the businesses and individuals who pay interns at the minimum or living wage. Many internships are unpaid and there are businesses—advertising, for example—where the whole ethos is to take on unpaid interns who fight their way to the top. That is true of other businesses as well. It is interesting to look at America, where legal action is being taken against those companies that do not pay internships. In many cases, those businesses are putting their hands up and saying, “Right, we are going to pay our interns”. The same should happen in this country. We have work experience, which is about helping not the employer but the person gaining that short work experience. We have volunteering which, as the name says on the tin, is about volunteering because you want to do something good for a particular cause. Maybe for the first few weeks, an internship should be at your expense, but if it is any longer, you should be paid at a living wage.

I know the Government are sympathetic to this. I think right across this House we are sympathetic about it. There are issues to do with taxation and salaries that we need to understand. I realise it is very late in the day and the Minister cannot give any commitments. I guess nothing can change now, unless we push this to a vote, and I perhaps hope we do not. However, perhaps the Minister can meet us to go over in our own minds about how we might take this forward. I have talked to Ministers and I know that there is a degree of wanting to support this move.

Pension Schemes Bill

Baroness O'Cathain Excerpts

Thursday 5th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lipsey (Lab)]

My Lords, I should first declare that I am the unremunerated president of the Society of Later Life Advisers, which provides independent advice to older people. I am sorry that I have not taken part in the proceedings on this Bill so far, knowing, as I have, that it is so safe in the eloquent hands of my noble friend Lady Hollis, but I want to intervene in this case to draw to the House’s attention one particular, very dramatic effect of what is happening.

Let us imagine two people, A and B. They both have £40,000 in their pension pot, and they both retire on the same day. One buys an annuity, the other takes the money as a lump sum. A few weeks later, by coincidence, they both have to go into a care home. As they go into the care home, they both say, “I don’t want to sell my home which I am leaving to go into this care home. I might get out one day. Please don’t make me sell”. To person A, the following applies: the council, under the Government’s deferred payment scheme, has to give them a loan to cover the cost of their care, which is repaid when they die, so they do not have to sell their home. However, person B, because they have £40,000 in their pocket, exceeds the £23,250 limit—the arbitrary limit which I have drawn attention to on a number of occasions—on non-housing assets that they are allowed to have to take advantage of the deferred payment scheme, so they instantly have to go off to sell their home.

The Government promised that nobody would have to sell their home to pay for care. That transposed gradually into a universal guarantee and was then narrowed down still further so that nearly half the people eligible for it were disqualified—but now we find arbitrariness added to arbitrariness because so much will depend on whether you chose to take a lump sum or an annuity. This is beyond rectifying now, alas, as the secondary legislation has gone through, but one thing we can do is to make sure that before somebody decides to take a lump sum, they know that they will in future not be eligible for the deferred payment scheme. That requires authoritative advice. Is that really too much to ask?

[Baroness O'Cathain (Con)]

My Lords, surely there must have been discussions since the Bill had its First Reading between those in the pension business and those who act as financial advisers to people. Frankly, most people do not understand anything about pensions, and I think we have to accept that. Maybe people here do, but most people do not. You go to a financial adviser, who explains. I say, “Oh, take away all that small print. I can’t be bothered to read it”. That is the first thing, and that is a sin that I have committed several times.

The second is that you do not understand the way it is written. The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, made a point about plain English. I think that should be made on every single Bill that we pass in this House, because it is so convoluted and it is just hopeless. People deliberately make things complicated so that they can hide behind them, but that is not the Government’s fault; it is ours for not insisting that we have much easier ways of looking at these things and for not making people like me, instead of throwing it into the waste-paper basket, take some responsibility for my decision, which I have not made on the basis of proper information.

National Infrastructure

Baroness O'Cathain Excerpts

Thursday 22nd January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness O'Cathain (Con)]

My Lords, this is a brilliant debate, given that we are looking at investment in and planning for the United Kingdom’s national infrastructure. As noble Lords can probably see, I have torn up my speech completely and have scribbled only a few things because almost everything that I had wanted to talk about has been mentioned.

The letter of May 2010 was a fact, although even then we were more infrastructure-minded when looking at plans for 2012. We are now looking at many greater plans for the next five years. It was slightly unfair of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, to castigate the Government, because investment in infrastructure in the five years of this coalition Government was at a higher proportion of GDP than under the last five years of the Labour Government.

Investment is something that we do not have too many worries about. Sovereign wealth funds and individual corporate investors want to invest in this country. Why? They trust us, appreciate our rule of law and the relatively stable political climate, and approve of the established regime of independent regulators. They are all part of a climate that is attractive to investors. Investment is certainly part of our normal business proposition.

However, I am concerned about the future of infrastructure programmes in this country because of the skills shortage. The skills deficit is definitely a fact. We have funds, brains, designers, brilliant architects and award-winning engineers. We have a history of excellent research and innovation. What we must do is make skills the most important short and medium-term focus of our education system. I wish that I was convinced that there would be more rapid upskilling than seems to be happening. We need more of the technical academies such as those set up by my noble friend Lord Baker, who I am glad to see is sitting in his place.

I ask my noble friend the Minister if he could use his undoubted influence to resolve the current visa problems of overseas students who graduate from UK research institutes and have to leave the country after graduating. This is crazy; it flies in the face of common sense and sends all the wrong messages to would-be investors. This country is home to four of the top 10 graduate colleges in the world league table for research and innovation—Cambridge, Imperial College, Oxford and UCL. I have deliberately listed them alphabetically. Why do we educate these people to such a high standard in the best colleges in the world and then say, as soon as they have completed their PhD, DPhil or whatever, “You cannot stay. You’ve got to go”?

In conclusion, I firmly believe that we are in a very good place, both to attract investment and to produce great new developments in infrastructure. However, there is a caveat. We cannot put this at risk by allowing political posturing to damage the course we should be taking. We definitely need a national consensus. The leader of the Opposition in the other place certainly did this when he announced that he would insist on a freeze in energy prices if he were leading the Government. The overseas reaction was immediately bad. Investors are not risk-averse but when political whims enter the equation trust is damaged and we all know how hard it is to roll back from that situation.

Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Baroness O'Cathain Excerpts

Friday 7th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Browne of Belmont (DUP)]

My Lords, I rise to speak in favour of Amendment 12, which was tabled by the noble Lord, Lord McColl of Dulwich, and which I have co-signed. Amendment 12 would have the effect of adding two additional subsections to Clause 1. The first new subsection would ensure that only a person who is terminally ill may initiate a request for assistance to end their own life. The second new subsection would ensure that no medical professional can make a suggestion to an individual that they consider seeking to take their own life.

Like many in this House, I have always opposed a change in the law to allow for assisted dying. I understand the sincere motivations of those who desire to change the law and I have listened to the many eloquent speeches given by Peers from across the House in favour of the change. However, I have never been convinced by the idea that such a law would be the right way forward. I continue to believe, as I said at Second Reading, that this is not a path we should go down. Such a change would have a detrimental impact on the lives of some of the most vulnerable people living in the United Kingdom today, especially those who are disabled, who may feel under enormous strain to take their own lives, even if they do not want to do so.

To that end, I welcome the opportunity presented by this Committee and specifically by Amendment 12 to highlight the fundamental flaws in this legislation. Amendment 12 very effectively helps to highlight the failure of the Bill to guard against the very real possibility of people encouraging others to seek assisted dying. I find it quite extraordinary that those drafting the Bill failed to have regard for such basic, elementary dangers arising from the legislation. While I am sure that no Member of your Lordships’ House would countenance such a possibility, unfortunately human nature is such that we must all acknowledge the real possibility of some people encouraging others to end their lives for financial or other gain if the Bill becomes law.

To my mind, it is easy to envisage a scenario where a family member who would perhaps gain financially from the death of an elderly relative or who was tired of having to care for that person could initiate a request for assistance in ending the life of their relative. The person might not want to die but, on seeing that their relative wants them to end their life, they go along with it, perhaps because, as we have heard, they do not want to be a burden. I think that your Lordships will agree that such a scenario is not far-fetched.

The second new subsection proposed in Amendment 12 is also imperative. I am not a medical expert, as I know some noble Lords are, including the noble Lord, Lord McColl, but, as a layperson, when I listen to the opinion of my doctors, I trust their judgment. If a doctor tells me that I should take a particular medication or go forward for an operation, I will do so on the basis of their judgment, although obviously within reason. I believe that I am like many in our society in this respect. We trust medical professionals who look after our best interests, and they are in a position of significant influence as a consequence.

Under the Bill as it currently stands, it seems that it would be legal for a medical professional to suggest that a person considers the option of assisted dying. To my mind, that is deeply concerning. If a medical professional were to suggest to a terminally ill person that they should consider the option of assisted dying, this could have the effect of putting significant pressure on that person to take their own life. This would especially be the case if the patient was not medically informed or trained. If a trusted physician who had been caring for a terminally ill person and had forged a relationship with them was to tell them that they should consider the option of assisted dying or, indeed, if they were to go further and try to sell the idea, it would be easy to envisage a person in that vulnerable state being swayed by the view of the physician. This is not sheer conjecture about what might happen in a doctor’s surgery if the law were changed.

An article entitled “Oregon Physicians’ Attitudes About and Experiences With End-of-Life Care Since Passage of the Oregon Death with Dignity Act”, published by the Journal of the American Medical Association in May 2001, reported under the section on changes in clinical practice since the law in Oregon came into being:

“Six percent of physicians had initiated a discussion about physician-assisted suicide with a terminally ill patient, including 10% of physicians who opposed the law and 6% of physicians who supported the law”.

Human nature says that doctors will make suggestions to patients and that there will be relatives who discuss the option of assisted dying with a doctor. I believe that we should protect individuals at a time of vulnerability and not bring more pressure upon them. I support Amendment 12.

[Baroness O'Cathain (Con)]

My Lords, I wish to raise a point for clarification. Amendment 12 states:

“No registered medical practitioner, registered nurse or other health professional may suggest that a person consider seeking assistance to end his or her own life”.

It does not mention whether they are terminally ill. That means that anybody could say to a person with a chronic hearing problem or even dementia, “Why don’t you seek assistance to end your own life?”. That person would not necessarily be terminally ill. I just want clarification on that point in the amendment.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, I rise also to point out what seems to be a flaw in the drafting of the second proposed new subsection in Amendment 12. As drafted, the registered medical practitioner, registered nurse or other health professional does not have to be treating the person referred to. That would mean that if my daughter was a nurse, she would be caught by such a measure if she said to me, “Dad, shouldn’t you seek assistance?”. That does not sound probable but you never know. I simply draw the Committee’s attention to what seems to be a fatal flaw.

Money Laundering: UK Parliamentarians

Baroness O'Cathain Excerpts

Tuesday 14th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deighton]

First, my Lords, I need to make the point that having an effective, comprehensive, international campaign against money laundering is a critical weapon for us, and we are taking leadership in this area. I absolutely accept that the implementation domestically needs to be significantly refined. As I have already said, I will work with the FCA and the industry bodies to ensure that we have a more proportionate application of the rules.

[Baroness O’Cathain (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Razzall (LD)]

My Lords—

Pensions Advice

Baroness O'Cathain Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, this is why we have set up a new framework for regulation and why we established the Financial Conduct Authority. We have given the authority much greater powers than the FSA had to deal explicitly with these problems. We have to be sure that the new products which are coming forward meet the standards that the noble Baroness wishes to see. The FCA is tasked with that job and is absolutely determined to avoid the problems of mis-selling that we have seen in the past.

[Baroness O'Cathain (Con)]

My Lords, is it at all possible that any information on pensions that goes to the ordinary man or woman in the street, like me, could be passed by the Plain English Campaign because there is nothing worse than page after page of small print in stupid words?

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, I completely agree. For many years I have been trying to persuade the financial sector to do as the medical sector does and establish a professional body of writers to try to ensure that the material that people get is comprehensible. As far as this particular process is concerned, the FCA is looking to provide a template that pensions providers will complete, which might be on as little as a single sheet of paper, that will provide the basis for the guidance that is subsequently given.

United States Budget: Economic Impact

Baroness O'Cathain Excerpts

Monday 10th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, the rating agencies, as we all know, have an unblemished record in dealing with businesses and countries. For those countries that have seen their credit rating reduced, including the US, there has been virtually no impact on their ability to borrow.

[Baroness O'Cathain]

My Lords, can we not realise that trade is a two-way thing? It is import substitution and exports. We should encourage more import substitution in all our purchasing in this country. It is never mentioned and there is no reason why some of the wonderful British goods that are exported to earn foreign currencies should not be bought by people here, thereby reducing our imports.

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, I absolutely agree with my noble friend, and it is very important that we do all we can to support new initiatives, such as the one being led by my noble friend Lord Alliance to reinvigorate the textile industry in the north-west, where there now appears to be the prospect—if we get it right—of creating almost 250,000 jobs in textile manufacturing for the first time in a generation.

FSA Investigation into LIBOR

Baroness O'Cathain Excerpts

Thursday 28th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord. As I said, we have concerns about the question of directors, particularly directors of banks, to make sure that the regime is appropriate and tough enough. The regime for directors of banks, because of the special nature of their role, should be looked at on its own merits. That is why it is timely that the RBS report and consultation, going very much to this point, will be published next week by the Treasury. I hope that we will get a debate going about what is appropriate in terms of the special regime that might be appropriate for directors of failed banks if they are shown to have behaved negligently.

[Baroness O'Cathain]

My Lords, the Statement says that this was going on throughout 2005, 2006 and early 2007. Was it stopped in 2007, or has it been going on since then? I wonder whether it has been going on for another five years. If so, what do my Government propose that we should be doing? Can we actually believe these people?

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, on the particular case, the FSA report sets out what was going on. The important point for my noble friend is that the point of highlighting the dates which my noble friend gave was that this activity was going on before the financial crisis. It was going on in an atmosphere of greed in what were perceived to be the good times. When the financial crisis hit, the activity of the individuals at Barclays was motivated by something else, which was to do with the reputation and standing of Barclays in the market. The particular relevance of those earlier dates was to distinguish what then happened during the later period, in the financial crisis.

As the FSA and other regulators’ investigations go on, they will tell us more about the extent and duration of these activities. Given that the banks have been on warning of this for a period, I would like to think that they have taken significant steps to clean up their activity. We want to make sure that, as I have described with this ongoing review of the LIBOR system, the system is appropriate to the new market circumstances.

Queen’s Speech

Baroness O'Cathain Excerpts

Wednesday 16th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness O'Cathain]

My Lords, as has already been said, it is an honour to take part in a debate on the gracious Speech. Like so many others, I was tempted to take part in the debate on constitutional matters, but on a self-denying ordinance I took a vow not to on the basis that everything that should be said or could be said on the reform of the House of Lords had been said. I am not sure I was totally right about that because there were one or two nuggets during all those hours of debate—and we should not forget that we also had a full day of debate a short time before that debate. Frankly, I do not think we should publicise the fact that we spent two full debating days on 17 words in the Queen’s Speech, because that is what it amounted to. It would be difficult to justify, particularly as they came, as I have said, hard on the heels of a full day’s debate. There is also, I am afraid to say, overwhelming evidence that, outside the precincts of Westminster, very few people are even remotely interested.

I believe that there are many thousands, indeed many millions, outside the precincts of Westminster who are intensely interested in the issues being considered in today’s debate: agriculture, business, the economy, energy, the environment, local government and transport. Many of the contributors to this debate have commented on some or all of them. Each one of these issues is of huge importance to all the citizens of our country, whether they are really aware of it or not, and we should keep our minds and eyes firmly fixed on those instead of on our little local difficulty. Our responsibility is to ensure that all Bills related to the areas we are considering today are carefully scrutinised, debated and improved through the legislative process in this House, using all our experience and expertise—and thus negating, it is hoped, the statement of the Deputy Prime Minister that in the House of Lords we have only a “veneer of expertise”.

Many of the excellent attributes of our House have been described fairly fully in recent debates, but sadly we are frequently subjected to negative pronouncements which in common parlance are described, I believe, as “bad mouthing”. The economy, particularly the debt and deficit situations—too many confuse these—the sorry state of a large number of pensioners—we know where that stems from—and the truly worrying situation of unemployment are not collectively joyous and are constantly thrown at us from the Benches opposite. When I point out, as I shall again, that all of these issues are to a large extent part of the legacy of the previous Government, the orchestrated groans become full-throated. I hear no response.

The noble Baroness who is the Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition in the House of Lords and who I definitely number among my personal courageous friends, told us on 9 May that the “real record” of this Government is,

“of businesses and shops closing; of people being put out of work”.—[Official Report, 9/5/12; col. 12.]

The wording of the Motion of Regret tabled today includes regret about the,

“one million young people out of work”.

One needs to have a very short memory indeed not to make an instant link between that wording and the statement made by the Governor of the Bank of England in the past two weeks to the effect that the previous Government were directly responsible for the loss of—yes—1 million jobs. The noble Lord, Lord Myners, who sadly is not in his place, put up two blacks today. He certainly put up a black about the grocery adjudicator, but he also put one up about the Governor of the Bank of England. But, after all, was the noble Lord not actually part of the process that reconfirmed the Governor of the Bank of England’s reappointment during the period of office of the previous Labour Government?

Happily, something is being done about those 1 million jobs, as we have seen in today’s figures, but, sadly, we can expect yet another twisting of that news by the BBC. In the past few days, a presenter on Radio 4’s “Today” programme said that there was no mention of growth in the Queen’s Speech. No mention of it? Let me read out the first sentence of the speech:

“My Lords and Members of the House of Commons, my Government’s legislative programme will focus on economic growth, justice and constitutional reform”.

Episodes like that make me warm even more towards the re-elected Mayor of London. He has stated that,

“the prevailing view of Beeb newsrooms is, with honourable exceptions, statist, corporatist, defeatist, anti-business, Europhile and, above all, overwhelmingly biased to the Left”.

I could not agree more. Contrary to what is a fast-developing tendency in this House to score points, to increase the number of “blame statements” and rubbish this Government’s efforts to remedy as solidly, quickly, fairly and permanently as possible the legacy of 13 years of economic mismanagement, I believe that we must stop talking down our country and our economy, and in particular the heroic efforts being made in many sectors to build up what has been so damaged in the past.

The Opposition constantly accuse the Conservatives of destroying British manufacturing industry. I suggest that the doom-mongers should take a good look at what has happened to the British motor industry since 2010, and in doing so dispel that accusation. The statistics and information I am about to impart come from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders. They show that during the last five years of the Labour Government, jobs in the motor industry steadily declined year on year from 868,000 to 736,000. That inexorable decline stopped in 2010 when there was a slight increase of 1,000 jobs. In 2011, some 9,900 new jobs were created, and just as important, more than 12,000 jobs were safeguarded. Net investment during those last five years of the Labour Government—

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, this is the third time that someone from the Benches opposite has claimed credit for the very welcome revival of the motor industry. Does the noble Baroness not accept that the reasons for that revival, after a disastrous prior record, were threefold? The first was the intervention by my noble friend Lord Mandelson on the motor scrappage scheme and other incentives to the industry. The second was the better relations that were established between management and trade unions in the industry, and the third was very substantial investment by Japanese firms, nearly all of which occurred prior to the election in 2010.

[Baroness O'Cathain]

I absolutely refute all of that, but we can talk about it afterwards because the noble Lord is taking time out of my speech, and I will not have that. In passing, has anyone in this House mentioned the fact that the Corus plant which was mothballed by the said noble Lord, Lord Mandelson, in February 2010 was reopened a few months back and, since last Friday, is exporting steel?

I understand that I shall get bad marks if I carry on. All I want to say is that I think it is time that we understood that good things are happening in this country. We should stop peddling gloom and doom and get down to supporting the measures in the Queen’s Speech.

Public Service Pensions

Baroness O'Cathain Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

I echo the opening remark of the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, in referring to the constructive nature of the recent negotiations, albeit at the eleventh hour. I hope that the Minister will take care in saying who represents 5 per cent of what. One minute he is talking about the total public sector negotiation and the next minute he picks out a statistic which is to do with the Civil Service. We ought to be very careful not to pick and mix in that particular way.

I hope that the Minister will comment on a general point: namely, now that we have reached where we have got to, it would be very useful for all of us to discourage people from going in for rhetoric such as many Members of the Minister’s party, both in this House and in the Commons, have indulged in. Their slogan can be summarised as, “Private sector employment is productive; public sector employment is unproductive”. It is not just the Daily Mail, the Daily Express, the Daily Telegraph and the Murdoch newspapers that say that—it is members of his own party in this House and the other House. I do not mean that anyone in this House tonight has said that, but it has been said on other occasions. Such comments are quite ridiculous. People will think that nurses and teachers are unproductive, and that hedge fund managers and second-hand car dealers are productive. Is it not time that, in a modern social democracy or mixed capitalist economy—I do not mind what you call it—we agreed that that is a ludicrous way of dividing people up?

That leads to the point that we must get on with improving pension provision in the private sector. The Adair Turner report on auto-enrolment has been stymied to some extent. Is it not important that we do not have a race for the bottom as regards pensions? I am glad that we have drawn back from that to some extent.

Am I not right in thinking that CPI has been selected instead of RPI because CPI has been growing more slowly in recent years? Would the Government have preferred CPI to RPI if it had been growing faster? I have been around for long enough to know that that is exactly how the Treasury thinks. I ask the Minister whether he agrees with me that there is a position in the final set of correspondence which refers to CPI plus 1.5 per cent or 1.6 per cent, and that that is the rationale for some of the arithmetic, which—understandably, given the Government’s predicament—is based on getting more in for the Treasury, hence the 3 per cent take-away.

Finally, is this not also the time to say, given the huge growth in pension pots for the top 0.1 per cent of people—which is scandalous and is getting up the nose of everyone in the country, apart from that 0.1 per cent—that the idea that we are all in this together is a bad joke, unless that issue is also addressed?

[Baroness O'Cathain]

My Lords—

[Lord Sassoon]

I am sorry—I thought there was a new and welcome procedure whereby Back-Benchers could answer questions on my behalf. That is an excellent idea, but it might require discussion before we do something so radical.

I should first be clear about the interesting analysis of the noble Lord, Lord Lea of Crondall, on how we have got to this point and what else we should be doing. When he talks about an eleventh-hour deal, it is worth reminding the House that the final deal was put on the table by the Government on 2 November. The agreement today is entirely in line with what was put on the table then, well ahead of the strike action on 30 November.

The question around CPI and RPI broadly relates to the nature of the deal whereby individual negotiations were carried out, scheme by scheme, around the level of benefit accrual and indexation rates. That is why we allowed considerable flexibility for the unions to vary the balance of factors within the total cost caps that were set. That is why a variety of different approaches was taken. There was considerable flexibility within the overall parameters set by the Treasury.

As to the question of what people in the private sector should be doing, perhaps we had better stick to public sector pensions, which are very important and should be what we are talking about.

[Baroness O'Cathain]

I must apologise to my noble friend for jumping up. It is just that I was slightly goaded by the noble Lord, Lord Lea of Crondall. I want to come back to him about the CPI versus RPI issue, because I have a pretty long memory, too. In the early stages of the Monetary Policy Committee and the Labour Government, there were endless discussions every month about the RPI. One of the reasons that the statisticians wanted to move to the CPI was so that they could get month-by-month comparisons with mainland Europe—the EU. That is exactly why it happened, and then it all started to go wrong. We should have a discussion off the Floor of the House and go to the Library to look at all that. It was fascinating stuff, and an enormous number of people wanted to go for the CPI, as opposed to the RPI.

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

I should be very glad to have such a discussion, but I have an even longer memory. For many years, I represented the TUC on the Retail Prices Index Advisory Committee, which was abolished by the Treasury when we made a recommendation that it did not like. The recommendation in about 1970 was that we should stick with the RPI for general purposes because—