Pension Schemes Bill

Alison Griffiths Excerpts

Wednesday 15th April 2026 Commons Chamber

[Clive Jones]

For the pre-1997 pensioners in companies such as Hewlett Packard and many others, the trustees are not able to act on behalf of the pensioners because a board, usually in the USA, says, “No, we are not going to give you a pension increase, even though the trustees say you should have it.”

To ease surplus extraction without first addressing that injustice risks locking it in permanently. It is the wrong thing to do. Once surplus is removed, there may be no realistic prospect of restoring the value lost by pre-1997 pensioners. There will not be any spare cash available to restore their pensions. The spare cash will have gone to the company with the Minister’s blessing. The Minister said, during the Adjournment debate on 19 March, that there was a need to build the evidence base, but decades have already passed. Why has that not been done before? Pensioners are dying at a rate of 15 a week. Delay at this point is not neutral: it is a choice to delay, deny and wait until they die.

Those pensioners have families. What message does the pension failure send to young people about the security of pensions? If the House can legislate in detail on how pensions are invested, it can legislate to ensure that surplus extraction does not come at the expense of those who have already borne nearly 30 years of erosion.

I end with a direct question for the Minister. Will he commit to ensuring that secondary legislation requires that each scheme seeking surplus extraction must have an independent professional examination of the effect of pre-1997 pension erosion, and that funds will be withheld to ensure restoration of full pension value for pre-1997 pensioners?

[Alison Griffiths (Bognor Regis and Littlehampton) (Con)]

There is a simple question running through what we are debating today: who is ultimately in control of people’s pension savings? When I speak to residents in Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, they assume that the answer is straightforward. They assume that their pension exists to deliver the best possible outcome for them, not to serve a wider policy aim and not to be steered from the centre. That is why Lords amendment 1 matters. It would do something very simple. It would remove the ability for Ministers, through regulations, to require schemes to invest in particular assets, particular sectors, or in particular places. It would set a clear boundary. It would say that those decisions sit with trustees, acting in the best interests of savers. If the Government believe in the strength of their growth agenda, they should make the case for it. They should create the conditions for investment, and they should not need a reserve power to lean on pension funds if that case does not land.

The same concern sits at the heart of the Lords amendments to clause 40. Those amendments would strip out what is known as the “asset allocation requirement”. In plain terms, they would remove the mechanism in the Bill that would allow Ministers to set conditions on how pension schemes invest their assets as part of the approval framework. We are told those are only backstop powers that may never be used, but if that is true, why fight so hard to keep them? Why remove amendments that simply take that power off the table?

The Government have, in effect, acknowledged the issue by proposing limits in lieu—caps on how far they might go—but that does not answer the underlying question. It just manages it. Because this is not about whether the number is 5% or 10%. It is about whether that power should exist at all. There is a broader point here: bigger schemes and consolidation can bring benefits, but only if they improve outcomes, not if they are driven by a single model applied from the top down and not if well-performing schemes are pushed into structures that do not suit them.

Lords amendment 77 would require the Government to publish a full review of public service pension schemes within 12 months, and not just their cost, but their long-term affordability, their sustainability, and whether they are fair across generations—a point made so well by my right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge (Tom Tugendhat). That is not a controversial ask. It is basic due diligence. People in my constituency are thinking about their own retirement, about what they can afford to save and about the pressures on public finances. They expect us to do the same at national level.

Taken together, the Lords amendments would do something quite straightforward.

They would protect savers from unnecessary interference, they would keep decision making where it belongs, and they would ask the Government to be transparent about the long-term picture. I do not think those are unreasonable tests, and the Government are wrong to strip them out.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the Minister, if he is ready.