Pension Schemes Bill (Second sitting)

Kirsty Blackman Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 2nd September 2025 Public Bill Committees

[David Pinto-Duschinsky]

Q Clearly you are talking about a large administrative challenge, but also about building capacity. We know the funds need capacity to raise their investment sophistication and their ability to invest in a broader set of assets. What do you think the minimum efficient scale for this is, and how quickly could the pools get there?

Robert McInroy: At the moment, there are eight pools across the £400 billion-ish of assets. I believe the plan at the moment is to reduce that to six. You would imagine that that gives a big enough scale. Some of those pools will be £100 billion-plus; that should be able to punch its weight internationally, I would imagine. The LGPS itself is of course open to accrual and to new members joining, so that is just going to grow over time. In some ways, I think these reforms set the plan for the future as the scheme continues to grow.

[Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)]

Q I am pleased to hear you talking about what scheme members want, not just in terms of the return that they are expecting, but also the projects that are invested in.

My question is about consolidation and local concerns that people might have. For example, they may not want a wind farm invested in because they are worried about the infrastructure that goes alongside that. If there is consolidation, will that remove the ability to take account of local concerns and to find great local investment opportunities? Will it dilute the input that people have locally, because it is taking it further away from them, or do you think it will be okay?

Councillor Phillips: As we already know, the establishment of the pools does take it away. There is no denying that. The important thing is to have member representation on pools. The scheme advisory board has always been supportive of that, although you need flexibility in how you do it; I certainly would not go for 50:50, because of the governance and regulatory responsibilities that the administration authorities have. I think Border to Coast particularly has employee representatives on there, and that works very well. In particular funds, you will have representatives on the committee and on the pension board. That is always important.

Getting the right engagement is always going to be a struggle, with all the rest of it, but, particularly with some of the ESG issues, that helps to better understand some of the issues. Of course, elected members that sit there are representatives of their community as well. They are aware as well. They are also aware that when they sit at the table on a pension, they have a responsibility first and foremost to that pension.

[Kirsty Blackman]

Q Obviously, there is a mix of people on some of these boards that you would not necessarily find on other trust boards. I have been a councillor, so I am well aware of the different directions you are pulled in if you are a councillor or an officer in local government. Are boards able to find enough engaged members to be on them who have got enough skill? You were also talking about training and ensuring that they are better trained; is that something that you are working on currently?

Councillor Phillips: Absolutely. We laid recommendations from the board before Government some time ago. They have now been implemented and rolled out, and that is very much a crucial part of all of this. The headline is all about the pooling, but the Government’s changes, and training and developing your members, are absolutely critical because of the important decisions that they make.

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[Kirsty Blackman]

Q On that last point about paying the surplus to scheme members—I am afraid we have had a massive pile of evidence—is that written in any of the evidence there, along with a suggestion of how to go about it?

Helen Forrest Hall: Yes, I think at least one of us has something, but we can certainly provide more details if that would be helpful.

[Kirsty Blackman]

Thank you, that would be really helpful.

[The Chair]

If there are no further questions from Members, can I thank the witnesses for their evidence this afternoon? We will move on to the next panel. Thank you very much for your attendance.

Examination of Witnesses

Patrick Heath-Lay and Ian Cornelius gave evidence.

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[David Pinto-Duschinsky]

Q Patrick, we have heard loud and clear your message that getting the value for money framework right is at the core of this. The Bill aims to put that on a sound footing. Which elements are required to get it right? How do you think the Bill will help to build them up?

Patrick Heath-Lay: As a package, the Bill brings forward the concept of value for money in a general sense. We need to move the conversation in our industry, particularly the conversation around workplace pensions, to the subject of value. We are all here to deliver value for members. The bit that always gets a lot of conversation is what value really means, but you cannot walk past the three fundamental drivers of a pension proposition, which are the investment return we give our members, what we charge them for it, and how our service shows up for them, probably in those moments of truth when they need us for guidance. Those are the three core elements to value, which we should not walk past.

We see this as an incredibly important area. I certainly believe that we should try to get this right as an industry, as best we can, from day one, because I think that it will be an important measure that we—regulators, Government, everyone—will lean on to understand how these reforms are playing through.

As an organisation, we have led a pound-for-pound initiative that others have joined. We brought in expertise from Australia, which is about 20 years ahead of us, and brought together a group of providers that are effectively going to dry-run some value for money measures and utilise that concept to provide some findings to regulators and Government that will hopefully help the iteration of our value for money framework. We really do see this framework as an important area, and I would like to see those three elements at its core.

Ian Cornelius: The focus on value has to be the right thing for our members. That is what they care about; that is what we are here for. There is some complexity to work through, such as how you measure value and what timeline you measure it over. Quite lot of engagement is required. We are piloting and trialling it; we almost certainly will not get it right the first time. It will be important to make it as practical and simple as possible. As Patrick said, it has real potential, in combination with the rest of the Bill, to shift the focus from cost to value. In the past, there has undoubtedly been too much focus on cost and not enough on value.

[Kirsty Blackman]

Q This is about people who do not get financial advice, which is the vast majority of people, and their understanding of pensions and what they are likely to get. On a DB scheme, you get an annual statement that says you will get x amount a month or x amount a year. On a DC scheme, it is more like, “This is your total pot.” As everybody’s circumstances are different, they have no idea what that might actually look like if they were to get it on a monthly basis. I appreciate your positive words about the guided retirement and the targeted support. Do you think there is potential in the future for moving towards ensuring people get that advice earlier, so they can ensure the sufficiency of their pot, as well as ensuring that they are making the right decisions when they take that pot?

Ian Cornelius: It is definitely desirable. One of the challenges with auto-enrolment is—it is a positive and a negative—that people are not engaged. Inertia has worked really well, but you have to work to engage them to make sure they are contributing the right amount, thinking about what they will need in retirement and thinking about their circumstances. For example, at NEST, only 40% of our members are registered with us online, so we have a really big job to play to engage more of them, get them to register, and get them accessing the tools and support that are available to deliver the best outcome for them. It is our fiduciary duty to do that. There is a lot more that we can, need and want to do in that space. Guided retirement is a big step forward. Targeted support would be helpful. There is a big challenge for the whole industry there.

Patrick Heath-Lay: I agree. As this unwinds, we should think a little bit more about how engagement will help. It certainly is a big driver. Both the introduction of these propositions and the guidance and targeted support we can provide through those processes will be important, but we also have to accept that even in the most mature economies’ pension systems, people still do not engage very closely on this. Even when they do, they find it incredibly difficult to interpret what they are being told. How many people can do good compound interest calculations, for example? It is sometimes mind-boggling what we expect people to know. There has to be more onus on us through those processes, as an industry, for the guidance that we provide and the obligation on us to enable effective, accountable support to be there. There is much more, and this Bill goes a long way to enable us to do that.

[Kirsty Blackman]

Q In relation to investments and some of the stuff that was not invested in historically, if we are talking about renewable projects and affordable housing—things that, historically, pension funds have maybe not invested in—you said that investing in these projects is a problem for smaller companies until they build up that level of scale. Are there other barriers? Are there legislative barriers, or other barriers—maybe finding schemes to invest in—that you or other companies could do with additional help in overcoming?

Ian Cornelius: Having a strong pipeline of investable assets is key. There is no doubt about that. Patrick touched on this earlier: one other inhibitor has been cost. It is actually quite expensive to invest in private assets. One of the things that NEST does successfully is to drive that cost down, but that is a barrier. The focus on cost rather than value in the past made it harder. The Bill shifts the focus towards value, which will be really helpful. There are a number of challenges that the bigger you are, the easier it is to work through. The Bill as a whole will therefore definitely be helpful, but collaboration with Government and across industry should help to unlock more of those attractive private market opportunities.

Patrick Heath-Lay: I have previously discussed this with the Minister. There is a role for Government to play here. It was even acknowledged within the Mansion House accord that this is for the benefit of savers, and there is a role for all of us to play in finding those efficient routes to deploy that investment through. The problem right now is not whether there is investment to come; there is. The Mansion House accord has created that. There is a wall of capital potentially available. The issue is connecting it in the right way with the investable opportunities—not only the planning and whatever is needed to create those investment opportunities in the first place, but the routes of access and the investment vehicles used. There are further conversations to be had about how we can do that as an industry. Efficient deployment is probably the biggest challenge for us as an asset owner in ensuring that we are sharing that benefit back with members.

[John Milne]

Q Auto-enrolment is a great success story. It has certainly got lots more people investing in a pension than would have done otherwise. However, the fact remains that large numbers of them are nowhere near on course to have a reasonable pension in retirement. Small pot consolidation helps, but we have to admit that it is going to be a modest contribution to solving that problem. Do you think we are missing a trick in the Bill? Is there something else that could or should be there to help—or is that a job for another day?

Ian Cornelius: That is where we welcome the Pensions Commission. It has been set up to actively look at adequacy: what is right, and are people saving enough? There is no doubt that many people are not saving enough and there are a lot of people who are still excluded from retirement savings. There is a big issue and challenge with the self-employed. There is a challenge for the industry and the Government to work on, but the Pensions Commission creates the right environment to do that. Auto-enrolment has been a big success, but it is only a job half done. Completing that job through the Pensions Commission is incumbent upon the Government and industry.

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[The Chair]

I call Kirsty Blackman. Very quickly, please.

[Kirsty Blackman]

Q In relation to private assets and the investment in them, is the balance between carrots and sticks correct in the Bill, or should more carrots, for example, be provided to encourage that investment?

Tim Fassam: That is another very good question. As the previous witnesses said, it is important to ensure that there is a pipeline of assets coming to us. A lot of what the Government are doing with the national wealth fund and the British Business Bank is helping with that. We would like to see—we would say this, wouldn’t we?—a little more focus on insurance versus banks. Banks are a vital form of capital—I am absolutely not suggesting they are not—but there is a skew towards banks. A few more insurance experts in the national wealth fund, and ensuring we have that pipeline of investable assets, could be valuable.

We are very lucky in the UK that we have fantastic start-ups, and amazing universities that are generating brilliant ideas. What we really need is scale-up capital. At the moment, about 70% of firms that need major scale-up capital go overseas for it, and then their head office moves. We need to make sure that we have an attractive environment for those firms to stay in the UK, and that is where scale comes in. A number of witnesses have talked about the benefits of economies of scale and professional asset management capability. That is absolutely right; they are critical benefits. One of the less discussed benefits is if you want to—

[The Chair]

Order. I apologise for the interruption, but that brings us to the end of the time allotted for the Committee to ask questions of this witness. On behalf of the Committee, I thank the witness for their evidence this afternoon.

Examination of Witnesses

Michelle Ostermann and Morten Nilsson gave evidence.

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[The Chair]

We are not quite out of time, but I am going to call other Members to ask questions of the panel. I call Kirsty Blackman.

[Kirsty Blackman]

Q Thank you very much for all your hard work on this, for your passion and for how articulate you are, particularly for those people that cannot be there and cannot make the case themselves. I really appreciate it. I absolutely agree with what you are saying on indexation; I think it is incredibly important. You were talking about the people that would benefit from these changes. Are they overwhelmingly well-off people, or are they people that are really struggling because of the lack of indexation, and who would therefore be more likely to spend the money and to grow the economy by spending their money, if the Government are worried about balance sheets?

Roger Sainsbury: I have to say that there is a great range.

Terry Monk: I cannot remember what it is, but the average FAS member’s pension is something in the order of £4,000 or £5,000 a year, and if you look at the steelworkers, because they are our example, it is those sorts of guys. I worked in the City. I had a different job, but the majority of the people in the scheme had good benefits and good salaries but their pensions were important and they reflected the role they had in their life. I am not sure off the top of my head, but I think the average of the FAS pension is £4,500—some more, some less, obviously.

I want to make a point that I think Roger mentioned: at one stage, we were not at the table to talk as part of the pensions Bill. We lobbied hard. I know some of you have definitely put forward amendments to the pensions Bill to ensure that pre-1997 becomes part of the pensions Bill, which is why we are here today, but we had to work hard just to get that.

[Sarah Edwards]

Q I am interested in exactly what you were saying around the two-tier element, partly around the challenge of the fact that there are people who have got the full recompense or equivalent, and you have not. Do you feel that this is an opportunity to change that dial and set the record straight? Obviously, an amendment has been tabled. I recognise that; I just wanted to get a bit more from you on the fact that there are people who are in a completely different situation, and I just wanted you to build on that point that there are two sides to this. Some have not lost and some have.

Terry Monk: FAS stopped when PPF opened its doors in 2005, so most of the people in FAS did not have much opportunity to accrue any increasing benefits post 1997. The majority of them are old—the average age of the FAS member is now 73, which is much younger than I am. It is that age group of people who would really benefit, and their widows and their spouses—let us not forget them—and they would therefore spend money that they currently do not have to spend. They can afford their council tax. They can afford their heating. It would change their lives, in terms of feeling that they have achieved this success on their behalf and on behalf of the members.

Roger Sainsbury: I would like to talk a bit about the concept of an amendment. We have observed that one amendment has already been offered: new clause 18 suggested by Ann Davies MP. Our team and I have had a bit of a look at that in the last couple of days. While we very much appreciate her good intention in putting the amendment forward, it actually does not do the job in a number of respects. I do not know how many of you have ever grappled with the obscure and complex language of schedule 7 to the Act, but it is mighty complicated. Some time ago, I and my team spent several days trying to work out what an amendment should be to deliver what we wanted. I have got some first class people on the team, but in the end we decided we actually could not do it, and would have to leave it to the expert drafters in the Department.

That is yet another reason why—I mentioned it in the written evidence—at a meeting I have already asked the Minister if he would himself table the requisite amendment. When you come up against the sheer complexity that Ann Davies has obviously already come up against, this is another reason why we think that would be a very good idea. It is slightly unusual for a Minister to table an amendment to his own Bill, but it is permitted, as the Minister said when I was talking to him about it. In a complex situation like this, it would absolutely be the best way of getting straight to the desired answer, so I plead with all of you to join me in urging the Minister to take this on.

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[Steve Darling]

Q I have two key questions. We have heard repeatedly in evidence today about questions to do with secondary legislation and guidance. As we go through the Bill Committee and further stages, what confidence do you have as Minister that you will be able to give some clear signalling to the industry about what is likely to be in that guidance and legislation, to drive the confidence it needs in the short to long term?

The other area that I want to ask about relates to the information that we heard from Nest: only 40% of its members had signed up online. That demonstrates that the issue is about getting positive engagement from those who are perhaps less financially secure. Are you confident that we are doing all we can through the Bill to help those who are most financially challenged? How are you going to hold yourself to account as we proceed to ensure that that is the case?

Torsten Bell: Those are great questions. On regulations, you are absolutely right. This pensions Bill, like most recent ones—although there have been exceptions that have come with unintended side effects, to go back to what was just mentioned—does rely heavily on secondary legislation. My view is that that is the right thing to do and is almost in the nature of pension schemes. That is partly because the detail should rightly be consulted on and partly because things will change in the context.

You are right that there is a large reliance on secondary legislation. Yes, in some areas, as we go through the detail, clause by clause, we will be able to set out to you where our thinking is up to. In lots of cases you will already see consultations by the FCA and TPR, starting to develop the work that will then feed into the regulations—that is particularly true, for example, on value for money, which we have just been discussing. I also think that it is important for us to provide clarity on when we will bring forward those regulations and when we will consult on the input to them, so that people know that. That was why, when we published the pensions reform road map, and when we published the Bill itself, I set out when we anticipate bringing forward those regulations so that everyone in the industry and in the House can see when that will happen. Page 17 of the road map sets out how we envisage that happening, and it is absolutely right. When we come to the clause-by-clause discussion, there will certainly be things where we will not be able to say, “This is exactly what will happen,” and rightly, because there needs to be further consultation with the industry on those things.

On the broader question of engagement with people, particularly those with smaller pensions—there is a very heavy correlation between the chance of someone being engaged with their pension and the size of that pension pot, partly for obvious reasons, but for wider context reasons, too—the pensions dashboard that Chris Curry mentioned earlier is a large part of facilitating that engagement. Lots of countries have had versions of the dashboard; it does make a material effect. One of the lessons from Australia is that the average size of DC pots, as they start to build rapidly—as that becomes the default system in an auto-enrolment world—does have a material effect.

I was with someone who runs one of the big supers recently; her view was that they hit a tipping point when there was suddenly this huge engagement where people were looking at the app provided by the super every week. There are pros and cons to that, by the way. Remember that there is a reason why we default people into pension savings. There are good and bad ways to engage with your pension. We do not want people on an app, in the face of a short-term stock market downturn, making drastic decisions to do with their investments that have long-lasting consequences. It needs to be done right; that is exactly why, when it comes to the dashboard, we are user testing it extensively.

[Kirsty Blackman]

Q I have two questions. If the Minister could just answer “yes” to the first one, that would be great. The Regulatory Policy Committee has said in its assessment of the impact assessment that the monitoring and evaluation plan is weak—it has used that word. It has said that more detailed plans are needed on monitoring and evaluation, outlining success metrics, reporting requirements and methodologies. Will the Minister commit to considering those and to updating us during the course of the Bill Committee about when monitoring might happen?

Torsten Bell: I am happy to take that away. Obviously, the monitoring will need to be different for different parts of the Bill, which are on different timelines.

[Kirsty Blackman]

Q The other question is in relation to the fact that there are 273 amendments—240 normal amendments and 30 new clauses—which we got yesterday. I have raised my concerns with the Minister privately about this, but I want to say publicly that this is a really big issue. It is very difficult for us to read 273 amendments in 24 or 36 hours, and to be able to make sense of the Bill. Does the Minister understand that this is an awful lot of amendments to be dumping on Committee members, and that it might make the line-by-line scrutiny significantly longer as we try to work out what the Bill will look like? The one that we discussed on Second Reading is very different in some areas from the one that the Government are now proposing.

Torsten Bell: Let me address that in two minutes before the Chair cuts us off. I definitely recognise that there is a large number of amendments. It is not unprecedented—the Procurement Act 2023 had 350 Government amendments, and 155 on Report.

[Kirsty Blackman]

I was on that one as well.

Torsten Bell: We have all made life choices. The thing that I am trying to avoid—and the reason why there are so many at this stage—is what has happened with other Bills, such as the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill in the last Parliament. I do not want to table loads of amendments on Report, after the line by line. That is the alternative. This is a very large Bill. The number of amendments, in part, reflects the fact that everyone has signed up to a Bill that is complicated and very large. My judgment was that it is right to get as many of those amendments down now, so that you have them for line by line. Also, I have gone out of my way over the last 24 hours to spell out to you all where the major changes are. The substance and the purpose of the Bill have not changed. In almost all cases, the amendments are relatively minor and technical.

[The Chair]

Last question—Luke Murphy.