Alan Meale
Main Page: Alan Meale (Labour - Mansfield)Local Government Pension Scheme
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Ian Blackford
Again, I find myself in complete agreement. The hon. Gentleman is correct and there is an argument that what the UK Government have done is perhaps in contravention of European law. I will come to that point a little later.
Sir Alan Meale (Mansfield) (Lab)
First, I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on the fine way in which he has approached this important debate and got it going. This is an important question. In the 1960s, an ex-Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, forced through a report on the financial institutions, which revealed that over 70%—I think it was 74% at the time—of the FT share index was owned by pension funds. That shows how important this issue is.
To go back to the hon. Gentleman’s earlier point, there is a question about the value of gilts and bonds. I do not think it is just about that—it is also about the violation of the rights of individual pension-holders. The Government pay the money over in the first place, then take it back and say, “We’ll allow you to have this, but only if we decide how it’s spent”. That has got to be stopped.
Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)
Order. We are having a lot of interventions. This is a three-hour debate, so if people want to make long interventions, I would love to hear them give a speech instead. There is no need for long interventions, Sir Alan.