I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for supporting the clause in that way. It abolishes safeguarded rights and as such is part of what will be a rolling review of the pensions regulations designed to achieve a degree of deregulation. He will of course know, having seen the Lewin and Sweeney report, that there is no magic bullet that will achieve the deregulation that we want. It is an exercise that needs to take place over time, looking at all aspects of existing pension regulations. A number of measures that we can take to achieve deregulation now appear in the Bill. This is one of them and there are others that we will debate either today or in later sittings. The hon. Gentleman is perfectly right to identify that as one of those deregulatory steps and I am pleased that he welcomes it. As he says, when a divorcing couple or civil partners who are dissolving their relationship—it does include that—seek a final financial settlement the court must take into account the value of any pensions held by either party to the divorce or partnership dissolution. One of the options open to the court is to make a pension-sharing order.

When a divorced scheme member’s sharable pension rights include contracted-out rights, the former spouse’s share of those rights is know as the safeguarded rights, and those rights are subject to a detailed regulatory regime, similar to but not the same as the rules for contracted-out rights from which they are derived.

We have received representations, both as part of the deregulatory review of private pensions and also prior to the review, that safeguarded rights serve no useful purpose, that they restrict the options available to the member and just add administrative complications to pension schemes. We have been persuaded by those arguments and have taken the opportunity to bring forward the clause and to remove safeguarded rights. That is a useful, and I am pleased to hear a supported, step towards the process of deregulation.