Equitable Life Policyholders: Compensation

Richard Fuller Excerpts

Thursday 22nd October 2026 Westminster Hall

[Richard Fuller (North Bedfordshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Furniss. We know that issues of injustice can take an awfully long time to reach a resolution in Parliament. It is important that people who have or feel that they have suffered an injustice at the hands of the state should have worthy champions who have the doggedness and stamina to continue to make their case, so I am delighted to congratulate the hon. Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton) on securing today’s debate.

As has been noted, the issue goes back through this Labour Government, previous Conservative Governments, the coalition Government, the Brown Government, all the way back to Blair. Let us take a moment to think about the individuals who have already been waiting two decades and more for what they would see is a full resolution. As a Member of Parliament myself for periods of that time, I have had a sense that this matter is unfinished business.

I was interested to listen to some of the comments. One issue that was raised, most notably by the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) and my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope), was on regulation and the role of regulators. On the different perspectives and remedies, I think I am closer to the one suggested by my hon. Friend. The hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth made the point that regulators are being hollowed out. I would say that on average they have greater scope, greater funding and more people. There is an issue with their focus, but more importantly, the structures to hold regulators to account are insufficient. There is no annual review of each regulator that is performed as effectively as in other areas, so I would encourage the hon. Member to press that point to improve our system of regulating the regulators.

[Ruth Cadbury]

I respect the shadow Minister’s views, but adequate powers and adequate resources go together. Too often since I have been in this place I have heard again and again that regulators would like to have done more and simply do not have the capacity. They do not have the staff in place. That is my view.

[Richard Fuller]

I do not want to go too far off the topic, because I am a bit of a nerd on regulating regulators. We can find time later to talk about that. It was an important point, as was the point made by the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George). I am glad he did not make a party political point, but it is a relevant point that the Labour party’s position in opposition was that the compensation was not sufficiently substantial.

I want to make three broad points in the lead-up to questions on each to the Minister. The first point I want to establish is that making changes to the settlement is not set in stone; it is a matter of Government choice. I want to give an example, which I raise solely for the purposes of talking about choice on pensions, not to talk about the decision that was made, because it is about choice. This is about mineworkers’ pensions. The incoming Labour Government made the choice in the case of the mineworkers’ pensions to move the surplus that had been accumulated in their fund to the mineworkers rather than back to the taxpayer—back to the Government. So it was a use of otherwise public funds that resulted in a boost to mineworkers’ pensions of about 30% to 32%. That was a choice.

I just ask the Minister to consider this. It was a choice by the Government to boost pensions that were already being paid “in full”, and yet the Government seem to have no choice about people who had an 80% decline in their pensions. It might strike some as odd, with a different set of values, to treat one differently from another. I would be interested in the Minister’s thoughts on that, but the point that I am trying to make is that this is a matter of choice for the Government.

My second point leads from a quote given by the Minister’s colleague, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, who said on this matter in September 2026:

“There are no plans to reopen any decisions relating to the Payment Scheme or review”.

That is an interesting phrase, because part of the conditions around those decisions are couched in different wordings of the phrase—that the settlement amount was determined in consideration of the “position of public finances”. That was stated way back in 2008 and also when the settlement was announced in 2011. It was alluded to again in 2016. Given that the Minister’s colleague said there are no plans to reopen any decisions, can the Minister confirm that it is still the case that considering the state of the public finances is a live factor that is encapsulated in that?

What I mean by that question is, should there be a change in the public finances, would there then be scope for the Government to change their mind? That is an important point. I do not want to lay out a false hope, but the settlement amount was decided specifically in consideration of the public finances at the time. Times now may be better or worse, but they are certainly different. When we hear the Minister’s response or read the statement made by the Minister’s colleague saying that there are no plans to reopen any decisions, it is important that it is clear that they are still open to consideration if the public finances change.

I want finally to return to what the hon. Member for Leeds North East said in his excellent speech about unallocated and unspent moneys. He said that if funds have been allocated but are not needed to meet the liabilities for which they were intended, then they should be used to compensate people who have still not received full redress. That really is a question about what those unspent funds would do. That partly encompasses the reserve and partly encompasses unallocated moneys. In the big scheme of things, it would be very helpful if the Minister could confirm that it is the intention that those moneys in that envelope will be reallocated to policyholders, rather than being swept back into general taxpayer money.

The last thing we want to come out of this debate is the Minister being unclear with Equitable Life policyholders, who in some cases have lost 80% of their pensions already, or suggesting that if there are moneys left in the envelope, which was set at a particular level at a particular time because of the state of public finances, any surplus moneys will be squirrelled away and given to the Government again. I would be very grateful if the Minister could answer those three questions.

[The Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury (Torsten Bell)]

It is always a privilege to respond to a debate under your chairmanship, Ms Furniss. Let me start by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton) for opening the debate. He was referred to as a limpet earlier, but he has been more proactive than that in his campaigning on this issue over the years. It is an important issue to him and to lots of other hon. Members. I should echo the point he made at the beginning about the right hon. Member for Goole and Pocklington (David Davis), who is not in the Chamber but who has been focused on this issue for a long time. Members have campaigned on this issue with tireless energy and kept the issue in the spotlight.

I want to reflect on some of the astute points that several hon. Members made. The truth is that it is not possible to restore trust entirely—certainly, not in the firm that was involved in this among the people affected, but also probably in the regulator, but hopefully Members’ campaigning has restored trust in local representation and the campaigning energy of local representatives.

The issue is even more important to the thousands of Equitable Life savers who were affected. The point, which was well made by the hon. Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) and others, about the human effect is one that I am sure everybody in this Chamber has at the front of their mind. Those affected included my grandfather, and I have met lots of other constituents who were members of the mutual before it disappeared. I have also met with the action group, which many hon. Members have also met with. We have all heard about the kinds of human impacts that hon. Members have set out well today.

On the big picture, several hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North East and my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Peter Swallow) talked about the importance of people having trust in pensions. This is a particular part of the pension system, but the point also applies to the entire pension system. That is something I take very seriously indeed as the Pensions Minister. I was up in Liverpool at the Pensions UK conference last week talking in those exact terms about how our task is to make sure that we address what is today, if we are honest, too low a level of trust in pensions. That is true of both state and private pensions. It is our job to rebuild that trust. That includes how, in some parts, pension scams are on the rise—my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) raised that.

Obviously, the Financial Services Compensation Scheme now exists, in a way that it did not in the period that we are talking about, when we are talking about pensions operating within the contract-based part of the pensions system. That is a big change, and it is compensation paid not by taxpayers, but by the financial services industry itself. That is the answer to the specific question posed by the hon. Member for Christchurch about what happens when the regulators or, more importantly, the providers fail. The answer is that there is a compensation scheme, although we are here because there was not a compensation scheme in place—and it has caps in terms of the compensation due.

I will make some progress on the specifics of this case. Hon. Members will be aware this is a topic that has been well documented and explored over the years—the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) set out the role of the sabbatical for him in the period in which that has taken place. The Equitable Life payment scheme was established to make payments to eligible policyholders where maladministration had been found. That maladministration contributed to some savers suffering a relative loss totalling £4.1 billion. Relative loss was defined as the difference between the value of the policyholder’s funds with Equitable Life and what they would have received if they had made a comparable investment elsewhere. I am merely pointing out that that is not a cash loss; it is a loss relative to a counterfactual of having invested in a different but similar product.

That approach followed the 2008 parliamentary ombudsman’s report into the collapse, and was the foundation of the payment scheme. In 2010, the Government of the day accepted the ombudsman’s findings and chose to allocate in the region of £1.5 billion —the quote from the Chancellor at the time—to make tax-free payments to eligible policyholders in respect of the reduced returns that they received from their investments. That Government chose what they saw as the correct balance of interests between the interests of the affected policyholders and taxpayers. That is the choice that was made. I am obviously fully aware that, as we have again heard today, people are dissatisfied with that £1.5 billion and suggest that the issue should be reopened.

It is not for me to defend the decisions made by the then Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition Government. To be fair to the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney), she came closest to doing so today, but other colleagues chose not to—[Interruption.] The hon. Lady chose to defend the decisions of that Government to some degree and others obviously did not. The balance of opinion in this Chamber is that the then Government made a mistake in the size of the compensation that was allocated. It is not for me to make that case, but were they here to do so, they would say that decisions need to be fair to taxpayers as well as policyholders, and they would point out that there is a wide range of people responsible for the disaster that we saw in Equitable Life, including those who were responsible for the firm through that period in the 1990s when very reprehensible actions took place.

[Richard Fuller]

The Minister is making the case that the position when that settlement was made about balance between taxpayers and policyholders was a matter of fault and responsibility. Does he not also recognise that a substantial part of that balance was to do with the state of the public finances? Will he confirm that that is still a live consideration in the Treasury that could in future lead to the settlement being reopened?

[Torsten Bell]

I will come to the hon. Gentleman’s last question towards the end of my remarks, but on his first point he is absolutely right to say that the then Government’s key consideration—when I referenced taxpayers—was the public finances. That is the point being made. That was the key driver in the decision by the then Government about how much money to allocate, rather than trying some kind of specific accounting for the impact of the maladministration per se.

Ministers at the time also noted the consistency of their decision with the ombudsman’s report—we have discussed a bit of that today—and the ombudsman subsequently wrote on this issue to the all-party parliamentary group, which I think several hon. Members present have been part of, confirming that the then Government’s decisions

“cannot be said to be incompatible with the report.”

As hon. Members know, following representations from groups such as the Equitable Members Action Group, the Government prioritised those acknowledged by all parties to be the most vulnerable—the with-profit annuitants. They received 100% of their losses. That meant that, of the £1.5 billion, £725 million was allocated to with-profit annuitants, to be paid annually over the duration of the annuity, which continues to this day. That included the £100 million contingency fund—that is the answer to the question put by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon)—to ensure that the provision for the annuitants, should they live longer than expected, was there. That is obviously a standard actuarial process; it is what sits behind the regulation of the insurance sector when annuities are being sold. The remaining £775 million was allocated to be paid as lump sums to with-profits non-annuitants holding other products.

As for the details of how much has been spent, I can provide answers to the questions put by several hon. Members. As of 30 September 2026, the total value of payments made by the scheme was almost exactly £1.4 billion—it is just short of that figure—and that is an increase on the previous figure that the hon. Member for Christchurch cited.

I note the references in this debate to the pre-1992 with-profit annuity holders. The coalition Government excluded them from the scheme, not because they had not suffered real impacts from the collapse of Equitable Life—I think the then Government recognised that they had suffered real impacts—but because their purchase of those annuities, which is the point at which someone locks into the decision in the case of an annuity, was outside the period of maladministration, so the Government would have struggled to find a locus to make a payment in the terms of a scheme, because there was no maladministration to tie a payment to. Again, it is not for me to defend that Government. However, if they were here today, that is how they would explain the decision that was taken. That is why the 2013 decision, which was referenced by the then Government, to provide separate, tax-free ex gratia payments was the way in which the previous Government chose to proceed.

The scheme has now been fully wound down; it was closed in 2016 by the then Conservative Government. That is now over a decade ago. I suspect that hon. Members know that I cannot give all of them, or indeed all the impressive campaigners on this issue, the answer that they would like—a straight “more compensation”. I suspect that hon. Members know that that is the case. However, I want to give them what I think is the next best thing, which is a straight answer, and it is the direct answer to the question put by the hon. Member for North Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller), the Opposition spokesperson. It is that there are no plans to reopen the previous policy decisions taken by the previous Government. The previous Government made decisions given the public finances at the time. Those decisions were debated by that Parliament—some Members present were part of that Parliament, and the rest of us respect the decisions of that House.

The only part of the payment scheme in operation is the annual payments made to eligible annuitants. The scheme is on track to distribute the remainder of the funds allocated, as planned, on that basis. The right thing for this Government to do is to ensure that the ongoing payments to those eligible with-profit annuity holders—the group recognised, I think by all of us, to be the most vulnerable—continue to be made. I will finish by assuring them that the funding for those payments remains protected and again thanking all hon. Members who have spoken in this debate.

Sovereign Grant Bill

Richard Fuller Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 14th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Richard Fuller (North Bedfordshire) (Con)]

I thank the Minister for his speech. This follows a recent debate on ways and means that his colleague the Exchequer Secretary had with my hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (James Wild). I do not wish to repeat the points that were made on that occasion.

His Majesty’s official Opposition are supportive of this Bill. As the Minister laid out, the 2011 settlement has run its course; it did well for its time, but some aspects of it were due for reconsideration. As he said, the recent significant programme of upgrades to royal residences for public purposes has now reached its conclusion—I think this year is the final year of the additional funds—so it is timely for us to look for a change in structure. I thank the Minister’s colleague the Exchequer Secretary, because on the 11th of this month, he wrote in reply to questions from my colleague, answering questions about some of the points that we may get into in detailed consideration of the Bill.

One of the substantial changes of principle in this Bill is that the ongoing ratchets that were effectively put in place by the 2011 Act have essentially become a backstop of £99.9 million. In his answer to my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) about potential variability, the Minister has given us some confidence about the ability to plan; we know that there will not be an absolute reduction. However, questions remain about extraordinary circumstances in which the Treasury would be able to reduce the settlement in any one year. I think that the Liberal Democrats will be asking that question in reverse—about changes to the percentage that may occur—but those are matters that we can discuss in Committee.

His Majesty’s official Opposition recognise the tremendous work that His Majesty the King and the royal family do on behalf of our nation. We understand the power that that provides our nation with in our international relations, and the comfort that it gives to the people of this nation, and we support the Second Reading of this Bill.

Pension Schemes Bill

Richard Fuller Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Wednesday 15th April 2026 Commons Chamber

I have been clear that that is the only reason the reserve power exists. To reinforce that point, our amendments in lieu today spell out that the power can be used only to support the industry’s view of what is in savers’ interests, as laid out in the Mansion House accord. The majority of savers’ contributions are held by schemes that have signed up to that accord.

[Richard Fuller (North Bedfordshire) (Con)]

Then why worry?

[Torsten Bell]

I have just explained to the hon. Member why he should be worried. He is happy to carry on with the status quo; we are not.

We are going to set this out in two ways. First, we will specify on the face of the Bill that regulations under the reserve power cannot require more than 10% of assets to be held in qualifying assets overall or more than 5% in the UK—exactly matching the Mansion House commitments. Secondly, our amendments require any regulations to implement the reserve power to be entirely neutral between asset classes, spelling out that a future Government who took a different view from this one could not use the power to direct investments into hand-picked asset classes.

The existing safeguards in the Bill also remain: the time limit, the reporting requirements, the affirmative procedure, and—most importantly—the savers’ interest test that allows pension schemes not to deliver against the reserve power requirements where it is not in savers’ interests to do so.

Charter for Budget Responsibility

Richard Fuller Excerpts

Tuesday 24th February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Richard Fuller (North Bedfordshire) (Con)]

I thank the Minister for a succinct opening speech.

The charter for Budget responsibility seeks to confer the important attributes of stability and credibility on a Government’s management of the public finances and the wider economy. “Stability” and “credibility” are not exactly the first two words that spring to mind to describe the current Government’s management of the economy. Through their own incompetence, they have presided over a chaotic year that has shredded any remaining confidence in the Chancellor and her team and—more important—has done lasting damage to the life chances of so many young people who now cannot find work.

As the Chancellor prepares her spring statement, we have a Prime Minister living on borrowed time. This Government are painfully lacking in real-world economic experience, and they desperately need help. We will not be opposing the measure this evening.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Does the shadow Minister share the concerns that many, probably all, MPs from Northern Ireland have—although I welcome the good news in relation to the tax surplus; who would be churlish and not welcome something that is to the benefit of us all—about the Northern Ireland Executive finding it incredibly difficult to make ends meet and make the books balance? One thing we look back on is the Barnett consequentials. We have heard promises many times over a number of years that the Barnett consequentials would be addressed, but that has not happened. The Northern Ireland Affairs Committee has raised it, and individual MPs have raised it too. The Conservative Government and this Government said that they would look at it, but nothing has happened. Does the shadow Minister believe that it is now time to get things right for Northern Ireland, with a budget to help us to govern and deliver the goods, as the Government are doing here?

[Richard Fuller]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. I think his issue with the Barnett consequentials is one for the Minister to reply to, but the Conservative and Unionist party, as he knows, has very strong support for and kinship with our citizens in Northern Ireland. On his comment about the revenues that the Government received in January, I would just point out that that in large part was due to self-assessment returns and capital gains returns filed in that year. When we tease through the data, we will see that a lot of that came from people making economic decisions that, in the long run, were not in their interest, because of the uncertainty brought into the economy by the Chancellor, who has confused people for an entire year.

To illustrate the chaos of the last year, let me remind the House what the then Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the right hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones), said in the equivalent debate on the charter last year:

“Growth is the primary mission of this Government.”—[Official Report, 29 January 2025; Vol. 761, c. 344.]

But since then, comparing the OBR forecast from 2024 and 2025, growth is down in each year of the forecast period. In 2026, it is down to 1.3% from 1.8%. It is down in 2027, 2028 and 2029.

The then Chief Secretary also said that the autumn 2024 Budget

“put the public finances back on track, and we will keep them there.” —[Official Report, 29 January 2025; Vol. 761, c. 345.]

But since that statement the Chancellor has brought forward proposals to cut £5 billion from welfare. Then she reversed them. She said that she would stick to the two-child benefit cap, but then she caved in to Labour Back Benchers. The Chancellor has been forced to U-turn on her removal of winter fuel payments to pensioners. She has U-turned on her plans to tax our pubs out of existence, and she has U-turned on her damaging plans on the family farm tax and family business tax. After having said that she would not be coming back for more taxes, she did indeed come back to whack the British people again with tax increases amounting to over £26 billion.

When this Government came into office, the forecast was that they would need to borrow £77 billion this fiscal year. But under this Chancellor, that level of borrowing has ballooned to £112 billion so far and is forecast to reach £138 billion by the end of the year. According to the OBR in November 2025, public sector net debt will continue to rise over the forecast period, despite Labour raising taxes to record levels, and debt will rise from 93.6% of GDP to 97% by the time of the next general election in 2028-29—if the Government last that long.

Given the wreckage that they have caused in the general economy, Labour’s spin doctors have started to claim that the Government have the fastest deficit reduction plan in the G7. But that is only because this Government have spent so recklessly in their first years. Achieving this remarkable reduction rests on the credibility of the Government’s plans to raise taxes ahead of a general election and on their ability to rein in public spending in the out years—plans which, surely, their skittish Back Benchers will stymie, if the Government last that long.

There are two changes in this revised charter that I would like to note. The first is the decision to change the definition of the current Budget being “in balance”. Paragraph 3.6 of the previous charter said that

“balance is defined as a range: in surplus, or in deficit of no more than 0.5% GDP.”

The current charter does not include that condition. Can the Minister tell us why the decision has been made to remove that flexibility? I would also be interested in what he thinks of the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ recent report, which stated:

“The UK’s fiscal framework is based around a set of pass-fail, numerical fiscal rules. The fiscal debate is overly fixated on the amount of ‘headroom’ the government has against the most binding of those rules. The system incentivises the government to operate with the smallest amount of ‘headroom’ possible, with policy often fine-tuned according to the central point estimate of a highly uncertain forecast from the Office for Budget Responsibility.”

The IFS report recommended that

“the UK would be better served by a new framework based around a set of ‘fiscal traffic lights’”.

The Government appear to have gone in the opposite direction to the recommendations by stressing the importance of pinpoint accuracy, and I would be interested in the Minister’s views on that.

I turn to the most significant change: the removal of what was paragraph 4.27 in the previous charter, which said:

“At the same time as the forecasts, the OBR will produce its assessment of the extent to which fiscal policy has delivered, or is likely to deliver, the fiscal mandate.”

The Government have, at a stroke, removed the opportunity for an independent assessment by the OBR ahead of the Government’s spring statement, yet last year the OBR significantly revised many of its previous assessments ahead of the spring statement. The OBR wrote that it was expecting GDP growth of 1%—half the rate of the October forecast—and that

“CPI inflation is forecast to rise from 2.5 per cent in 2024 to 3.2 per cent in 2025, 0.6 percentage points higher than forecast in October.”

[Interruption.] I have not been called “kiddo” for a while. I hope the Whip on duty, my hon. Friend the Member for South West Hertfordshire (Mr Mohindra), understands that this is an important point to make. It may have taken me some time to get there, but this is an important point.

The issue here is: why make this change now? The Budget Responsibility and National Audit Act 2011 is clear that the OBR must prepare fiscal and economic forecasts and assessments at least twice a year. Clause 251 of the Finance (No. 2) Bill retains the requirement for the OBR to prepare forecasts twice a year, but it seeks to remove the requirement in the 2011 Act for the OBR to provide its assessment twice a year. Perhaps the Minister—the wannabe Chancellor—can confirm that the reason we are today debating a revised charter, which now excludes an OBR forecast just ahead of the spring statement, is specifically to preclude the OBR from doing its own assessment on the imminent spring statement.

We support tonight’s measure, but not with any confidence in this Government’s handling of the economy. In lacking that confidence, we are not alone. According to the latest Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales survey, business confidence fell again in the last quarter of 2025, with record concerns about the tax burden on business. In its December 2025 survey, YouGov found that 80% of the British people thought the Government were handling the economy badly. It is a sorry, sorry state for our great country.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call the Liberal Democrats spokesperson.

--- Later in debate ---

[Torsten Bell]

I thank the two Front-Bench spokespeople, one of whom spoke admirably briefly. I will not repeat the case for these changes, given that we have heard that both opposition parties are happy to support the Government’s changes to the charter, so I will just respond directly to the questions.

I say to the Lib Dems spokesperson that it is always good to hear anybody praising Sweden in any debate. On the questions about scrutiny, I do not think he gives enough credit to his hon. Friends on the Finance Bill, who have spent many hours scrutinising the policies, and I am sure they would be upset to hear his lack of faith in them today. Directly on his question about transparency, I think that is important, and that is why we are maintaining the two forecasts a year, despite there being only one fiscal event.

The Opposition spokesperson asked why we are making these changes now, and the answer is that in our manifesto we committed to one fiscal event a year. The IMF has come forward with sensible recommendations to reinforce that, and we are just responding to the IMF’s recommendations. He asked a question about the range contained in the previous charter, and that has been removed because it applied only at the spring forecast, and we are no longer carrying out a fiscal assessment at the spring forecasts. He asked about the IFS report suggesting a dashboard rather than fiscal rules. I can tell him that there will be no change to the fiscal rules, although I obviously always enjoy reading any think-tank’s reports, and I would point out that we have already doubled the headroom against the fiscal rules.

More importantly, I was sad to hear the Opposition spokesperson’s remarks more generally, because I always enjoy his normal perkiness, at least outside this Chamber, but he has turned into a gloomster.

[Richard Fuller]

No, never!

[Torsten Bell]

He is a total gloomster. He has totally ignored the record monthly surplus for the public finances. He has ignored the fact that wages are up, business investment is up and GDP has grown the fastest of any European G7 economy. He has ignored the fact that GDP per capita grew in 2025, after flatlining in the last year of the Tory Government and falling during the previous Parliament. He has ignored inflation falling and interest rates falling. I think it is right for the gloomster to be gloomy about his party’s prospects, but not to be gloomy about the UK economy. On that basis, I commend this motion to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

National Insurance Contributions (Employer Pensions Contributions) Bill

Richard Fuller Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 17th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Richard Fuller (North Bedfordshire) (Con)]

For a Bill that proposes to raise taxation on working people by such a large amount, this has been a remarkably brief debate. But I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull West and Shirley (Dr Shastri-Hurst), who correctly said that this was yet another anti-aspiration measure from this Government, and the hon. Member for Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey (Graham Leadbitter), who made it clear that this was yet another example of Labour breaking its manifesto pledge not to raise taxes on working people. He also asked one of the key questions, which I hope the Minister will address in his reply: as this measure is due to come into force in three years’ time, what assessment have the Government made of behavioural changes, and can the Minister be assured that the amount in the OBR forecast is robust on a dynamic accounting basis?

This is the final economic Bill of the year to be voted on in the House of Commons, and it is another Bill that targets people who are trying to do the right thing. The Bill is a bad measure. It is an anti-savings measure and it is an attack on prudence, so of course the Conservative party will oppose it. This final Bill, at the end of this full-on year of Labour government, leaves me with one fundamental question: why do the Labour Government hate the private sector so much? If you are a family farmer, the Labour Government will snatch your farm away from your children when you die. If you believe in private education, the Labour Government will put up a barrier at the school gate. If you save for your retirement, Labour will tax your every effort to achieve security in retirement. Why do the Labour Government take every opportunity to punish people who are trying to do the right thing?

The Bill makes a mockery of the Government’s own Pensions Commission, set up in July this year, when it wrote:

“Put bluntly, private pension income for individuals retiring in 2050 could be 8% lower than those retiring in 2025—undermining a central measure of societal progress.”

Back in June, the Government recognised the problem of a secure retirement. Now, they are adding to the problem.

I have a question about the numbers. It is interesting that this measure is scored by the OBR in that crucial year of 2029-30 at £4.845 billion, falling the following year to £2.585 billion. That is an important year, because that is when the Chancellor says she has put in all this headroom—how interesting. Does the Minister agree with the director of Willis Towers Watson, one of the world’s biggest advisers on pensions, when he said:

“While earlier introduction would be unwelcome, the change appears to have been timed to maximise revenue in 2029/30—the year that counts for the Chancellor’s fiscal rule. £1.6 billion of revenue in that year is a temporary gain which will be returned to taxpayers who pay employee contributions instead and claim back part of their tax relief”?

On the £4.845 billion—the full amount—is any of that actually a fiction that will be returned the following year, as experts suggest it will be?

The Bill makes it less attractive for employers to contribute to private sector pensions. We all know that there is less certainty in the private sector, because that is where defined contribution schemes predominate, whereas in the public sector, greater certainty is given by a defined benefit scheme. In the public sector, there is also benefit because the contribution from the employer to employee pensions is much higher than in the private sector. In the public sector, employer contributions are equivalent to 27% of earnings, on average, according to research by the Taxpayers’ Alliance, but in the private sector the average contribution is only 8%. Why are the Government proposing to make it harder for private sector employers to contribute to the pensions of their employees? The Bill actively exacerbates the differences. By the way, it does nothing to tackle the unfunded £1.5 trillion liability of unfunded public sector pensions, which will fall on taxpayers.

The Bill is yet another example of the lack of private sector experience on the Government Front Bench. This Government are the least business aware Government in our country’s history. They are taxing and regulating growth out of our economy. Labour Ministers are punishing workers who want to save more for their retirement, and making it harder for their employers to help them to do so. While they can rely on their cushy, gold-plated public sector pensions, private sector workers are worse off.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Order. Before I call the Minister, I want to put on the record that the behaviour I have seen on both Front Benches this evening has been about the worst I have ever witnessed. The debate should take place across the Dispatch Box, not from a sedentary position. [Interruption.] No—not “He started it!” This is not a classroom.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dan Tomlinson]

Some 4.4 million of the self-employed are also not able to save into salary sacrifice schemes; it is right that we make the scheme fairer for all.

Let me continue to run through my numbers. Some 10 million people have signed up to a pension since auto-enrolment, which has limited the need for salary sacrifice. There are more than 900 tax reliefs; this is one of a number that we are reducing to raise revenue fairly at this Budget. Without intervention, salary sacrifice would have cost £8 billion a year by the end of the decade. Instead, we will now raise £7 billion from this change over the course of the scorecard.

The change will affect those on higher earnings more: 60% of the contributions come from the top fifth of employees and just 5% of those earning less than £30,000 will be affected. We will give businesses time to plan—this is not coming in for a bit less than four calendar years.

[Richard Fuller]

Will the Minister give way?

Green Book Review

Richard Fuller Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd April 2025 Westminster Hall

[Richard Fuller (North Bedfordshire) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I congratulate the hon. Member for Congleton (Mrs Russell) on calling this debate, and the nine other speakers on speaking with great passion about the potential of their constituents and their constituencies, as well as about the role that the Green Book review—a rather obscure topic—can play in seeking to unlock that potential. I note that they spared the blushes of the Chancellor. When she announced the review, to unlock the potential of which those hon. Members are so hopeful, she announced further growth measures in the south and south-east of the country. That shows the difficulties there are in achieving some of the objectives. The hon. Member for Mid Cheshire (Andrew Cooper) was kind enough to say that those objectives were the intention of the 2020 review: levelling up this country.

I am, perhaps, an ironic choice to respond in this debate. If I may stretch your tolerance, Mr Pritchard, I will mention some things about the area of the country that I represent, North Bedfordshire. To give hon. Members some sense of the disparities, let me enumerate some of the growth potential projects going on in my county: our housing growth rate is already two and a half times the national average; we have a proposal for a solar farm in my constituency, which will be seven times the size of the largest one in the country; we have the country’s largest road project at Black Cat roundabout on the A1; we have a proposal for a railway line, which will be the third largest railway construction project in the country; and we have the doubling of the capacity of Luton airport to bring people into the country. We are also awaiting, when the Treasury finally pulls its finger out, a potential £10 billion investment for Europe’s theme park from Universal Studios, which will then start a whole new range of investment potential in the south. The hon. Member for Congleton has the right person responding from the Opposition to answer some of her points—because frankly, that is too much for one area to take at one time.

The 2020 review mentions some points that have been repeated today, and the allegations were: systematic bias towards London and the south-east; the tyranny of benefit-cost ratios; overlooked unmonetised benefits; no allowance for transformation or other complex effects; and that guidance was responsible for strategic policy faults with no focus on where, or by whom, effects are felt. Those allegations have been echoed today, but I have to say to Members that the findings were that there were no systematic methodological biases in the process. However, there were significant problems in understanding of the Treasury’s five case model, leading to significant poor practice in the application of the Green Book, and some changes have been made as a result.

As I thought Members would raise the issue of disparities in expenditure, and whether those changes had any effect, I went to table 9.4b of the “Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses 2024”, which enumerates the public expenditure on services per head in real pounds between regions. It splits that between current expenditure and capital expenditure, which is the focus of today’s debate. I have to tell Members that, if we look at those statistics between the years 2018-19 to 2022-23, real capital per head went down by 3% in the east and by 5% in the south-east. Real capital per head did go up by 20% in London, but it also went up by 25% in both the north-west and the north-east, by 24% in the west midlands and by 22% in east midlands. That is not to say that everything is done, but it is important to build on the progress that is being made. There is a lot more commonality here than we perhaps think.

[Mrs Russell]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Richard Fuller]

I am afraid that I am very short on time. I would love to give way, but I know Mr Pritchard, and he will not give me any more time.

The view that focusing on the BCR as the answer is incorrect. East West Rail, which goes through my constituency, has a BCR of 0.3. It loses money, but the Treasury still wants to push ahead with it—that is another question for the Treasury. There is not sufficient quantification, so we do not understand what those benefits may be for people.

I have one final question for the Minister, as I have only a little time—I do have some other questions, which I will send to him. Can he look at the implementation of the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012? Getting that done is really hard for small businesses and social enterprises in particular.

[Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)]

Order. I am sure the Minister knows this, but I remind him that he has 10 minutes. He can leave a minute or so at the end for the mover of the motion, but it is entirely up to him.