[Greg Pope]

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to explain why I voted against the amendments to the Pensions Bill in the Commons yesterday. It is implicit in Owd Bert's post that this was public money that I voted against spending, but this is not the case. The Conservative amendments proposed compensating some people who have suffered from the collapse of private pension funds by taking hundreds of millions of pounds out of other private pension funds. To be fair to the Conservatives they said that they would only use what are known as 'unclaimed pension assets', but as the Association of British Insurers pointed out these assets are not surplus to requirements as in the end all assets are used to pay out actual pensions. The ABI went on to say in a letter to MPs that the amendments would be like robbing Peter to pay Paul and would have serious and damaging consequences for pensioners. In the light of that advice I voted against the amendments and they were defeated.