Mr. David Begg:

I did not respond to the Chairman's point about the legal route. There was a fundamental issue of a legal nature as to whether the scheme was a defined contribution or a defined benefit scheme. The company took the view that it was a defined contribution scheme, meaning it had no obligation to put in money to deliver on the pension promised under the old IASS scheme. The staff view was, on that contrary, that it was a defined benefit scheme. The question could only be determined by way of litigation, such as through the High Court. The risk for either side was that if they lost in court, their case would be over. Therefore, although many people talked about litigating, nobody litigated.

I agree with auto-enrolment. Pensions should be mandatory, not "soft mandatory". There is a reasonable argument that we would get better results if we took all the money we put into subsidising pensions and put it into State pensions. Handling the transition would be tricky. If the Government announced in the morning that it was going to do it, it would be saying good-bye to all the defined benefit and defined contribution schemes that exist. If the Government made this policy choice, migrating from our current position would be very challenging.